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For those who recently purchased an iPad Air 2, would you be irked by an Air 3 in the Spring?

Traverse

Traverse

macrumors 604
Original poster
Mar 11, 2013
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To the Point: If you purchased an iPad Air 2 recently, are you happy you did? And will you feel tremendous buyers remorse if the iPad is updated in the Spring?


Background:
I purchased the iPad 3 in June 3 months before it was replaced. I was okay with the lower performance and tremendous heat for a while. I was excited to get an iPad Air 2, but was underwhelmed and returned it. Now the software has evolved to take advantage of it, but I said I'd wait for the Air 3 in hopes that it fixed some of the Air 2's hardware shortcomings. Well, Apple released no Air 3. I still said I would not buy last year's hardware but some things have recently changed:

(1) I'm teaching a lot now as a graduate TA. I work the homework by hand, scan it, annotate it on my iPad, and lecture by referencing it. It is quite heavy to hold for 30 minutes to an hour at a time while standing and it's just so slow. I need to load up very large scanned images and diagrams and it takes forever to process when I'm in front of the class.

(2) iOS 8.4 was my tolerance for lag and slowness on the iPad 3. iOS 9 made it even worse and now I'm genuinely frustrated by the device.

The iPad was a luxury, but has become an important work tool, but it's performance is actually starting to work against me. Plus, there have been numerous times where split screen would have been wonderful. All Apple had to do was give the iPad Air an A9 chip and I would have pre-ordered, but they did nothing. I'm worried about getting short-changed again. Really, the thing that will kill me the most is if the Air 3 has Apple pencil support, but I'm not sure Apple would turn around and give that to the Air 3 just 6 months after the Pros announcement. Had I known that there would be no Air 3, I would have kept my Air 2 last year despite the hardware issues. If I knew the iPad wouldn't be updated for another year, I wouldn't mind. I'm just afraid of a announcement in the spring or a silent update. If that happened, would you kick yourself for your recent Air 2 purchase?


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@sracer I tagged you because I know you just purchased an iPad Air 2 after the Pro's announcement.


EDIT: I don't mean this to be like the threads "is the Air 2 still worth it." I'm curious about your subjective view about wether an Air 3 in the spring would matter.
 
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Nah, I know it will be updated next year. Not especially interested in 4K and the resulting hit on the battery. The A9 will be a better chip, but not sure it would be worth it to upgrade. 3D Touch would be nice, but again not sure if that would be worth it.

I'm also not convinced that they will allow pencil support in next years model.

I will say that had I not scored the Air 2 for $150 off on the staples discount I probably would not have upgraded.
 
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No. I purchased my iPad Air 2 a week before the iPad Pro event. And I did not return it. Firstly, because of the significant price differnce between the Air 2 and the Pro. Secondly, because of the capabilities of the Air 2: it has two GB of RAM which is the most important part for an iOS device and it has Touch ID. In my real world use the performance would benquite the same I guess. I use it for surfing the web, watching videos (thanks PIP!) and light gaming and document stuff.

I would like to take a look at an iPad Pro someday. But even then I would wait for the refurbished models to arrive.
 
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FallenLegend said:
Apple pencil support is what is making me wait for air 3.
Click to expand...

fanta88 said:
Nah, I know it will be updated next year. Not especially interested in 4K and the resulting hit on the battery. The A9 will be a better chip, but not sure it would be worth it to upgrade. 3D Touch would be nice, but again not sure if that would be worth it.

I'm also not convinced that they will allow pencil support in next years model.

I will say that had I not scored the Air 2 for $150 off on the staples discount I probably would not have upgraded.
Click to expand...

I don't see pencil support coming soon. If the Air 3 was in the Spring, I say no, but if it is next fall I'd say "maybe."
 
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Traverse said:
I don't see pencil support coming soon. If the Air 3 was in the Spring, I say no, but if it is next fall I'd say "maybe."
Click to expand...

Yes, if it came I agree that would be the likeliest scenario, concurrent with a new iPad pro. But in that case, I would have been using the Air 2 for basically a year anyway, which is a typical product cycle.
 
Traverse said:
I don't see pencil support coming soon. If the Air 3 was in the Spring, I say no, but if it is next fall I'd say "maybe."
Click to expand...
I made my decision to purchase an Air 2 with the expectation that the Air 3 WOULD be released or at least announced in the Spring. I also think it likely that Apple include support for the Apple Pencil in the Air 3.

My decision was obviously made easier by the killer Staples deal they had last month. But I had already made the decision to buy the Air 2 before the sale so that was just icing on the cake.

So to answer your question: No, I wouldn't be irked. The Air 2 is terrific and if a Jailbreak becomes available I'm jailbreaking so that I can get mouse/trackpad support. That'll be "pro" enough for me. :)
 
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I'd been hesitating to get my Air 2, but bought at the recent Staples sale.
The fact is that I was having troubles pulling the trigger on updating due to price, and it'll be quite a while before the next iPad is similarly discounted.

Way better device than my iPad 3. No regrets.
 
Just picked up an Air 2 and sold the iPad 4. No point in feeling buyers remorse over technology. As long as you buy it when you need it or score a great deal, that's all that counts. My time of using it is more important than how many months I own the latest model.
 
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As soon as the iPad pro was announced I bought the air 2. It's been great using it. So much better than my air. Even if an air 3 comes out, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a worthy update. Apple will most likely wait to update it in the fall with 3D Touch. Putting out a non 3D Touch air 3 in the spring seems like a waste of an upgrade cycle.
 
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I purchase a tool to do a job. If an upgraded tool were released tomorrow, that wouldn't keep the tool I purchased today from still doing the job for which it was purchased. I regularly wait for new hardware releases so that I can buy the previous model at a bit of a discount.
 
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BenTrovato said:
Just picked up an Air 2 and sold the iPad 4. No point in feeling buyers remorse over technology. As long as you buy it when you need it or score a great deal, that's all that counts. My time of using it is more important than how many months I own the latest model.
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Well put. I bought an iPad 3 about six weeks before they introduced the iPad 4, so almost no one felt that more keenly than I did, since I was just outside the return window.

I bought an Air 2 this summer before we knew that the iPad Air 3 wouldn't be intro'd this fall and was OK with it then and still am, partly because I got a killer price on an LTE model and partly because I wanted to be able to use the iOS 9 beta's multitasking features. It sort of comes back to what BenTrovato said about the time of using it. I have a hard time imagining any new tech going into the Air 3 that's going to give me tech envy in any event.
 
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I've my Air 2 for almost 2 weeks now - as a result of the Staples deal. I was planning on upgrading to an Air 3 and was very disappointed Apple did not update it. I was hoping for the A9 chip mainly for longevity as I don't like to upgrade too often. I was going to wait til early next year to see if the Air 3 would be released in the spring but the $150 off was too good to pass up. Even if the Air 3 does get released in the spring, I will still have gotten my Air 2 cheaper than what Apple will sell it for when do release the 3. So no I won't be pissed and will be quite happy with my Air 2 for several years.
 
I was able to pick up an iPad Air 2 when staples had then on sale for $150 off the other week. They have them $90 off now. If you get a great sale price on one you won't have buyers remorse!
 
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Traverse said:
To the Point: I don't mean this to be like the threads "is the Air 2 still worth it." I'm curious about your subjective view about wether an Air 3 in the spring would matter.
Click to expand...

I bought the Air 2 over the weekend, replacing my Air 1. So far, pretty happy with it and, because I have every intention of picking up the iPad Pro in November, could care less about when an iPad 3 turns up. Couple of things:

The iPad Pro will be (hopefully) my in-the-house iPad of choice, where the iPad 2 will be more mobile - sort of like what the mini is for most people except the screen is too small for me. I'm sure I'll end up taking one or the other on the go, but the Air 2 likely more so.

The Air 2 came with 8.4.1 and I kept it there. It performs very well on 8.4.1 and there is nothing that 9 has to offer (yet) that makes the upgrade a must have (the Air 2 screen size is just too small for truly useful split screen and slide over, but I expect the Pro's much larger screen size will be enough to make those features actually worthwhile and useful and not more of a novelty than anything else on a smaller screen). Also, I put 9 on my Air 1 and I rolled it back to 8.4.1 within 72 hours because it was that bad. The promised performance improvements were (well, still are) dead on arrival which I guess isn't a big shock because iOS, starting with 7.0, has had miserable iPad releases initially compared to the iPhone counterpart. My iPhone 5 (also upgraded to 6s over the weekend) actually ran 9 better than the Air 1 - which makes no sense given how much more powerful the Air is.

So it looks like yet another unfortunate season of various point updates for iOS until Apple finally gets it right on the iPad. Hopefully the Pro will handle 9 well, but I will definitely test drive thoroughly before buying.
 
fm_carv said:
pretty sure the pencil will only be available for the "Pro" models of the iPad....so don't hold your breath on it appearing any time soon on the Air...
Click to expand...

None of us really know, of course, but my bet is strongly with you, based on how Apple tends to compartmentalize its product lines. I think that stylus support will be kept as a distinctive, iPP-only feature.
 
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