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Apple's New iPad Lineup Causes Potential Confusion With Inconsistent Features

It’s a mess!!! If the rumors about the 13” iPad are true, then it will get even more confusing. IMO this is what Apple should do:

1. Kill off the iPad Air. It was already in an awkward position and the new base iPad makes it even more confusing.

2. Make the iPad Pros… “Pro” again. Give it Apple Pencil 3 support, maybe throw in an SD card slot to match the new MacBook Pros, give it magsafe with fast charging. Make the screen OLED for BOTH sizes. Slim down the bezels so you have an 11.5” and 13”.

3. Make the base iPad compatible with Apple Pencil 2 and adjust the price accordingly with the iPad mini.

So you end up with:

- Entry Level: iPad Mini

- Mind Tier: iPad

- High end: iPad Pro
 
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jimbobb24 said:
This I don’t understand. If you needed an iPad you would skip because the line up is confusing? If you need one you find the one you like and buy it. It will not matter that it’s confusing.
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It’s comes down to the value of “Simplicity” that has brought Apple to their huge success under Steve Jobs. This mess today and the last few years is moving away from that and going back the era when Steve was not there. Though you may not be affected on average most customers (has been studied) will not be able to choose when given a complex number of choices. The book “Predictably Irrational” has some good insight on this I bet you would enjoy. (Also this book “Isanely Simple” by Ken Segall where he talk about Apple specifically)
 
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JPack said:
Indeed, 4 different iPods, each with 2 capacities and 6-9 different colors.

Some people like to be selective with their romantic Steve Jobs memory.
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The funny thing is, I watched an old keynote recently out of interest. There was one model of iPod that came with a case and another accessory, I forget which one (maybe a dock). But the accessories only came with the higher capacity model. If Apple does something like that today, people say "Steve wouldn't have allowed this", but he did stuff like that all the time.
 
tomtad said:
jobs-grid-6c.jpg


Tim needs one of these
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Lol. Came here to post exactly this!!!
 
JPack said:
The old lineup was more confusing because of the $270 jump between iPad and iPad Air. If you wanted a modern design for media consumption, you had to fork out $599 for iPad Air with Pencil 2 support. Today, the $449 iPad closes that gap.

I think it’s only confusing for the same people who don’t understand inflation. They were expecting a $329 iPad to have the same features as iPad Air but Apple to magically eat inflation.
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They magically ate it on the phone. As a shareholder I was upset about that.
 
We need Steve Jobs to come back and sort the line up like he did in ‘97… lol … He really kicked ass with the product line.

Ah….Steve we miss you !!!!

Its not just the iPads but the Studios and Minis that are a mess also …
 
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KeepCalmPeople said:
I too manage 2,500+ iPads in an education setting. I have a meeting with an Apple sales rep next week and will be asking the same question. I can only assume that Apple has kept the 9th Gen around to appease those of us managing fleets of iPads. A 30% price increase is going to be difficult for many districts to budget for.
I wonder if the 9th Gen will morph into an iPad SE with the same form factor and updated internals, aimed at the education market.
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It seems they have decided to avoid the expense of retooling production lines as much as possible. Probably because their margins are being squeezed by higher input costs / inflation and they didn’t have the courage to raise the price of their main cash cow, the iPhone, for fear of public backlash. I would rather pay a little bit more for a fully up-to-date model than have a 2018 iPad Pro design recycled for yet another year, with the new lower cost model surpassing some of its features (landscape camera, keyboard function keys). Factor the cost of “doing it right” into the MSRP!
 
B-Mc-C said:
It seems they have decided to avoid the expense of retooling production lines as much as possible
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No, it's because they now have to worry about enterprise customers who want the same configurations for as long as possible.

That's why the iPod Touch was around for so long: because lots of organizations were using it as a handheld scanner. That's probably why the used market for them is so robust.
 
Diamond Dog said:
I know the "SJ wouldn't have allowed this" trope is overplayed, but this is one example of where it makes perfect sense when you think back to his Pro/Consumer chart for the Mac. In the name of profit & at the expense of the user/customer experience, they've mucked the iPad line up so much that even I as an Apple fan, iPad owner, and MacRumors reader need a damn features matrix to keep track of the lineup.

If any of my family members (who are all users of iPhones, Apple Watches, a Mac or iPad here or there) went into an Apple Store to buy an iPad, they would need to have an employee sit down with them and walk them through all of the nuances and different Pencil versions and different screen technologies and charging ports and adapters and the 9th and 10th gen being both called just "iPad" and Stage Manager's different forms (or absence) depending on the model and yada yada. The end result is that they would likely either need to take a decent amount of time understanding the differences, or they'd end up just picking one and not fully understanding the differences-- the latter of which could result in buyer's remorse if they later learn about one of the differences (eg: iPad gen 10 and not being compatible with Apple Pencil 2, should they decide they want an Apple Pencil some time after purchase).

It would be one thing if there were many easily-distinguishable SKUs at different price points for the sake of providing choice to the customer. But in this case, it's very clearly done to function as a confusing pricing ladder to push upgrades on low-info consumers that aren't reading MacRumors to understand product differences. Implementing that at the expense of the customer experience cheapens the brand, IMO, and that's something SJ understood.

You can only bean count so much before you turn customers off. And sure, maybe this individually isn't something to cry APPLE IS DOOMED over. Their record profits certainly indicate it's working in that regard. My fear with each one of these bean counter decisions is that the company is now fully under the control of the spreadsheet warriors at the expense of those truly committed to "surprise and delight" and the customer experience that Apple has built its brand on.
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This is very well said ☝️
 
Let’s hear it for whatever iPad you have right now. Baby, you’ve never looked so good to me compared with the hellscape of potential upgrade options.
 
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opiapr said:
If anyone get confused with a couple of options on iPads I wonder how they go through life making major choices like buying a house, investments etc.
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Your argument is that it is okay for the process of choosing an iPad to be as confusing and research heavy as the process of taking out a mortgage or building a stock portfolio? Huh. Okay I guess.
 
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JippaLippa said:
Messy lineup...
I'd really like to see a three tier list:
  • iPad Mini
  • iPad
  • iPad Pro
Simple as that.
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They pretty much already had this before yesterday:
  • iPad mini - essentially an iPad Air mini in specs
  • iPad Air - mid-grade consumer model like the MacBook Air
  • iPad Pro - the best iPad Apple can make
The outlier had been the iPad (9th Generation) which exists to hit a price point using old tech. It is essentially the iPad SE and should probably just be called that.

But now, the iPad (10th Generation) is this awkward in-between product bridging the 9th gen to the Air. It would have been much cleaner to have this replace the 9th gen entirely so there would be no more Home button iPads in existence. The fact that it only supports the 7 year old Apple Pencil 1 (with an adapter to charge it) for a brand new design is just yucky.
 
tim cook has really butchered the lineup. he's the steve ballmer of apple. good for stocks but has no idea what he's doing otherwise.
 
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A combination of being unclear who a device is targeted to and trying to maintain pricepoints in the face of rampant inflation has led here.

In my mind, there should be AT MOST 3 lines - a budget line, standard line and pro line (e.g. iPad SE, iPad, iPad Pro). There should be CLEAR differences between them that is obvious without having to dig through the specs sheet (e.g. iPad SE: old design, last year's chip, worse screen; iPad: current design, this year's chip, larger, standard screen; iPad Pro: current design, best chip possible, best display, extra display features/cameras etc).

Things like storage size and colour are personal preferences and I don't really count them as confusing options. Screen sizes is a bit more tricky, but I wouldn't be against having a choice of 2 sizes for the standard and Pro models.

If there is no way to get an M Pro chip into an iPad then I would suggest that the standard line should either drop down to the latest A chip, or the previous M chip to help differentiate.

It seems clear the 9th gen is only sticking around to maintain that price point (same reason the M1 MBA is still around).
 
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terminator-jq said:
It’s a mess!!! If the rumors about the 13” iPad are true, then it will get even more confusing. IMO this is what Apple should do:

1. Kill off the iPad Air. It was already in an awkward position and the new base iPad makes it even more confusing.

2. Make the iPad Pros… “Pro” again. Give it Apple Pencil 3 support, maybe throw in an SD card slot to match the new MacBook Pros, give it magsafe with fast charging. Make the screen OLED for BOTH sizes. Slim down the bezels so you have an 11.5” and 13”.

3. Make the base iPad compatible with Apple Pencil 2 and adjust the price accordingly with the iPad mini.

So you end up with:

- Entry Level: iPad Mini

- Mind Tier: iPad

- High end: iPad Pro
Click to expand...

You were on the right track and then you messed it up. It's the same misconception we always encounter when discussions get to the iPhone Mini, too.

There's a demographic that wants budget-friendly 'entry-level' iPads. They're fine with fewer features.
And there's a demographic that wants full iPads (and phones) with most bells and whistles at a smaller footprint.

Those two demographics barely overlap.
 
Diamond Dog said:
Your argument is that it is okay for the process of choosing an iPad to be as confusing and research heavy as the process of taking out a mortgage or building a stock portfolio? Huh. Okay I guess.
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No. But if you can’t get confused making a simple decision between a couple of iPad models how are you capable of making actual important decision. Is not hard just look at what you need, your budget and then check what model fits your need. It isn’t that hard.
 
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