I didn't really care about the retina display, and as great as it looks on my iPhone; i honestly didn't find that i NEEDED to have it on my iPad. I am content enough with my iPad 2 to tote it around for another year or two before inevitably trading it in for it's newest incarnation.
Retina seemed like a great addition for the iPad though, and i'm sure a lot of people are going to enjoy their brand spanking new iPads (for lack of a better name). But i hadn't really sat down and thought about it, or what it implied until just 10 min ago... and now i hate the idea.
When i bought my iPad 2, it was an experiment. I didn't know how useful it might turn out. Didn't know if it would sit idly for months on my desk at home, or if it would turn out to be a marvel of modern technology that would become a piece of me. So i bought the 16 Gb version. Boy do i regret it. Specially now.
Not buying the iPad, i don't regret that; i regret getting the 16 Gb version.
This thing has become an inherent part of my day, i use it constantly, for note-taking, for web browsing, email reading, photo viewing and everything else Jobs implied on that great Keynote back in 2010.
But, what i find myself using it for more and more, is reading periodicals. I have a couple of subscriptions to magazines, and i love them.
But now i find out that those magazine issues are gonna end up weighing a whole lot more each on account of retina display. The extra pixels mean extra space, and the worse part is, my iPad can't even display the extra oomph... but i'll have to download it anyway. New iPad users will have to download the content for iPad 2 and original iPad, although they won't use it either... So it all turns into a lot of wasted space...
On a 16Gb iPad, this issue is specially infuriating. On my regular usage (which is a lot), I have had to cut down the amount of apps installed, limit the downloaded issues to 1 per periodical, have no music, few or no videos, and i still only have about 1.6 Gb free... and now I'm finding the periodicals and apps in general will weigh in a lot more for stuff that i will have to download, but ultimately cannot use... wtf.
No, seriously... wtf.
They should have just gone ahead and killed off the 16Gb iPad... it will become useless pretty soon, with much larger files on EVERYTHING. It's just too little space. I can't fathom using this thing at it's full potential with anything less than 16 Gb internal storage as is, i can't imagine with bigger files. It'll start feeling like a 256 Mb thumb drive...
Retina is fabulous, great, awesome. But the new iPad sizes should be 32, 64 and 128.
Sorry 16, but you're just not sweet anymore.
Well how much of the 16g is actually available?Isnt some of it assigned to Ipad tasks?
In response to some of the replies,
The average magazine file is ranging (as of my writing this reply) 250Mb-350Mb.
But take into account i subscribe to visually heavy periodicals, like National Geographic, Popular Science and Esquire, for example.
Please take into account I use this baby a lot. So much, in fact, i think i would have to categorize myself as a heavy user. For reference purposes i'll include a break down of how my space is broken up:
In periodicals alone i have quite a number of Apps, some with active subscriptions, some without, but they (the above mentioned triumvirate, Time Magazine, New York Times, Wired and others), account for around 2 Gb of space.
I also have some games, not many, not very heavy (GTA: CTW, Monopoly, World of Goo, Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Zombie GS, PvZ HD, Contre Jour, Risk, Solitaire and others), but they account for around 2.5 Gb of the allotted 14 Gb.
The productivity apps (Numbers, Keynote, Pages, Penultimate, Procreate, SkethBook, GoodReader, and all their files -which i use heavily for work-) account for the biggest chunk of space, taking up around 3.5 Gb.
Then there is the 2 Gb of photos i carry around (that, i guess, i can do without. Although i admit, i enjoy soooooo much looking thru my sunny beach vacation pictures while i trudge thru my work week).
Last but not least, there are probably around 1 Gb worth of apps that i use for my day to day meandering (Facebook, Twitter, Flipboard, TED, Stanza, etc.)
Together, that makes 11 Gb of usage, without a single song or video.
I have iTunes Match, and an iPhone so i don't really have a need to carry music on my iPad.
Movies and TV shows i do carry around sometimes (Netflix doesn't cover the series i watch, and i am from a country other than the US so HBO Go is a No-Go -same as Hulu-).
So i have 3Gb for my TV shows, and any sort of wiggle room that i might need for downloading new apps. I have +4Gb of apps that are just sitting in iTunes, waiting for their turn at bat (mostly games, i uninstall some to reinstall others and so on).
And that's my iPad in a nutshell. I have a plethora of other smaller free apps that i use, that i didn't throw in because they are not very representative (space wise), but like i said, i'm a heavy user. I haven't timed myself on the iPad, but by the end of the day the battery is usually at least down to 60%, which implies 4 hours use, at minimum during my work day.
I use it heavily for my lectures (not for actually presenting -i have a Macbook for that-, but as my personal notes which i set on the podium as i progress thru the lecture). I also use it for grading, and keeping track of student projects; as well as keeping a great many text books that i require CONSTANTLY during my courses.
Ok, so maybe i'm not in the target audience for the 16 Gb. But it is the entry level iPad, and does account for the majority of iPads out there. Maybe eliminating the 16 and sticking to 32 Gb is a stretch, but 16 Gb (14 Gb allotted space) is still small for comfort, at least for me.
I found this little tablet integrated itself so neatly into my work life, that i now find 16 Gb suffocating.
if you don't store or play a lot of games i think 16gb is enough
games and hd movies are what takes space quickly (hd movie is 1-5gb, big fish games are 500-1gig, infiniti blade 1 gig, etc)
however, if you're willing to do some micromanagement 16gb is alright. i went straight for 32gb this time around.
I dont think it goes all the way to 2500, just the last 1000 is saved in photo stream.
I guess my situation is a little different because my main computer with iPhoto and iTunes is running for the majority of the day, home sharing gives me access to all of that anywhere in the house.
eclipseblur954 said:I just can't wait for the jailbreak to come, ifile was great on my iPad 2, i bought about 5 32gb SD cards for about 100$'s on amazon, filled with HD movies for flights and such.
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What do you mean the iPad accepts those slot cards with movies?? Via USB somehow?