The pricing jump from 64gb to 256gb on the Mini is pretty hard to swallow, thus having to pay a monthly fee to have photos and videos stored in the cloud makes more sense. Either way, in the end Apple has my money, bastards lol. In a game of chess, I as a consumer got checkmated, and some of us don't even know we are playing that game with Apple until much later. Apple is an over the counter drug that has many of us hooked.
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Hands-On With Apple's New iPad Air 3 and iPad Mini 5
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I’m one of those that doesn’t need more than 64GB, but I was also someone who ran a 16GB iPhone 6S up until February of this year. It was getting a little painful though. At least Apple gave me $200 for it when I bought the XR. My almost 20 year photo album easily fits inside 64GB.
It seems like software to me, but who knows?
But if it continues to get in my way, I am going to swap it at Apple within the 14 day window. I love my Mini, but I want to be sure it’s okay. Will test demo models while I am at Apple.
It probably needs a much more powerful haptic engine to make it work on an iPad, even a smaller one. I think that was one of the reasons why 3D Touch never made it to the iPad, if I remember correctly. Personally I really prefer the physical button. It's much more satisfying to click.
I would agree with you about the cloud making sense. Except much as Apple goes out of their way to screw customers by not having a 128 gig model, they go out of their way to screw customers with their cloud service. Unless you have 24/7 access to fast flat rate internet, iCloud storage is useless.
i wold love to use iCloud storage with my mac which also doesn't have enough storage (thanks Timmy). But I can't have a simple folder that lives in the cloud. I have to mirror my home folder to cloud in such a way where as much as will fit lives locally with Apple algorithms deciding what to delete from local storage.
So I can't remove a local copy of something I know I won't need for a while to free up space on my physical SSD. And even worse I have to trust Apple's algorithms not to delete something I'm going to happen to need. I do have good unlimited internet at home, but spend most of every day out where my only source of internet is my cell phone with 5 gig/month and $20/gig in overage fees. So if Apple deletes stuff I need from local storage, I'm screwed. And it's not a matter of saying they won't delete recently used stuff. I do a lot of photo editing on the road, I may to want to keep my digital backgrounds local and one day I'll use one that hasn't been touched in years. So, I'd have to store those outside my home directory, which is fine for that but that is only one example. It just makes all of the computer management too much effort to be worth it.
Even worse, I said I've got limited internet most of the day. There is no way to tell iCloud not to update over cellular on the mac (on iOS devices there is). So if I attempted to use iCloud, I'd end up with a $500 phone bill almost instantly.
I actually find Apple to offer a decent value for cloud. $.99 for 50GB—I don’t know who else offers that. 200GB for $2.99 is also along normal lines. MS charges $1.99 for 50GB, and they have no 200GB option. Google offers no 50GB plan, and their 200GB plan is the same price as Apple’s. Dropbox has nothing under 1TB.
I have T-Mobile, so data use isn’t an issue on the go. I use cable internet at home. I also find iCloud to work the most seamlessly across all my devices. It does require you to use Apple, but I don’t have a problem with that. Unless things change with them in the future, I find they offer the easiest way to sync and use cloud.
The question is not that Apple offers 50GB of cloud storage for $0.99/month, the question is why has the base storage not been increased from 5GB to something more reasonable to say 15-25GB. I suspect Apple does this to force users to pay for cloud storage, how many people who are a bit over the 5GB need to upgrade and pay another subscription per month. Everything is a subscription these day, to provide the illusion of a lower cost of entry.
I paid once for cloud storage and dislike subscriptions as much as possible. It’s bad enough that I have to pay utility bills every month, now I have to keep track of minor recurring costs. I can see why people are tired of this model and businesses love them, people will blindly pay those minute amounts and think nothing of it, while all these small amounts add up to a company’s bottom line.
Remember Office Space the movie with the rounding “bug” from every transaction.
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Oh, I’m not big on subscriptions either. However, at >$12/year, I can deal with iCloud’s 50GB plan and the great conveniences it brings. I believe you can actually go get an iTunes gift card and let it draft from there instead. Honestly, cloud storage should be a charge of some kind—it is basically a utility, as a company must maintain equipment for the consumer. In this case we store and access info on their equipment rather than drawing bandwidth, water, gas, or electrons from it. And these days no one offers more than 5GB for free. Even MS only does 5GB. Maybe google does, but we know how private that data is.The question is not that Apple offers 50GB of cloud storage for $0.99/month, the question is why has the base storage not been increase from 5GB to something more reasonable to say 15-25GB. I suspect Apple does this to force users to pay for cloud storage, how many people who are a bit over the 5GB need to upgrade and pay another subscription per month. Everything is a subscription these day, to provide the illusion of a lower cost of entry.
I paid once for cloud storage and dislike subscriptions as much as possible. It’s bad enough that I have to pay utility bills every month, now I have to keep track of minor recurring costs. I can see why people are tired of this model and businesses love them, people will blindly pay those minute amounts and think nothing of it, while all these small amounts add up to a company’s bottom line.
Remember Office Space the movie with the rounding “bug” from every transaction.
I skipped the iPad Mini 4th gen in part because the $399 model only had 16GB. This time the $399 model has 64GB, which is a big improvement. I realized I didn’t need to have my entire music+photo library downloaded in both my 256GB iPhone and my iPad, so 64GB should be fine.
It’s a bummer how much Apple charges for additional storage though, I agree. I like going with secondhand gear when I can, since there’s much less of a price difference for more storage once the device is used.
I got an iPad mini 5 after a few months with the new 12.9” iPad Pro. The faceID on the iPad Pro seemed to be a huge selling point, but I forgot how much faster and bullet proof touchid is. I love touchid, and how I can hold the device and not worry about where the front camera is. The device is a joy to use for consuming content while my iPad Pro is my main computing device. I cant say how much faster the iPad mini is than the old iPad mini, which has now been retired to my daughters primary device.
This is a good expenditure and a great compliment to the iPad Pro or MacBook Pro/air/MacBook.
Not really gonna happen because you have no way to recharge it.
First your MS pricing is totally wrong. They charge $2 for 100GB, $4 for $200GB. And if you prepay by the year, $5.83 for 1TB...and that 1TB includes full usage of the full version of MS Office. $8.33/month gets you a family account for up to 5 people to have their own cloud and office subscriptions. That completely blows Apple out of the water unless you have zero interest in Office, in which case you're roughly on par. I don't know about google or dropbox, since I'm not familiar with them and don't feel like googling prices.
But...I never said anything bad about the prices Apple charges. For me, I'd go in on the 2TB plan and not bat an eye on the price. 50GB seems completely useless to me given you can't even back up a base model iPhone with it, but imo choice and flexibility is always good, and I'm happy they have a tier for everyone.
If you actually read my post though, my problem with the service is they go out of their way to make it completely useless except as a back-up and sync service, neither of which I care at all for. The other options you list are actually intended to use as cloud storage. iCloud is not for the reasons in my previous post.
Lightning cable is sturdier by design.
Oh, *cough* FireWire *cough*.
I am sorry. USB-C is the future.
Streaming is fine. Cloud is fine. Until there is no internet, then nothing is fine. I am not arguing 64GB is too small. It is decent enough already, although I wish base model has 128GB, which I have only 12GB left on my iPhone 6s Plus.
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Well, it may look outdated. But that bezel serves its purpose well. I would love not to use a tablet without a bezel that I can comfortably hold on in landscape mode.
I was referencing their OneDrive plan page:
https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/plans/
They list Free, 50GB, and 2 1TB options with Office365. I have no use for office at home though, and I can get a copy for $20 through my work if I really needed to. Odd, but my post wasn’t responding to you, but to code-m. Not sure what happened there. Anywho, I use iCloud for photo and file management just fine. I do wish you could put your iTunes library in iCloud and play it from iTunes, but that’s about it. I don’t have tons of files though, so I could see why that would be hard on some users.
Wife doesn't know whether to get a Mini 5 or Air 3. She preferred the Mini 3 due to weight but maybe that issue is no more for Air 3?
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Ahhh…. got it. So that's why the Apple Pencil 2 could not work with the iPad Mini 5. I totally forgot that the Pencil 2 is recharged by some magical magnetic pairing with the (higher end) iPads.
Not that it's a game breaker for me, since I don't think that I'm the target audience for a tablet stylus (although it's a nice option to have should I ever need to use one). Tablet styli are popularly used for 2 things: 1) graphic designers/drawing artists, and 2) businesses/corporations that require customers to sign TONS of digital signatures (I've seen iPads used for this). I am not going to use my iPad Mini for either 1 or 2.
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I've witnessed LOTS of old people (with poor eyesight) damage their Samsung/Android micro-USB cables or ports because they've tried to force the micro-USB connection the wrong way. Old people do things like that…. such as my 65+ year old aunts and parents. They think that it if they jam it in hard enough, it will go into the port. The stupidity of the USB connectors are that it's not a symmetrical design. Lightning connectors/cables… there is no right-side up or down-side down to think about…. it's a clever intuitive design that is classic Apple thinking.
The USB-C connector is a step in the
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I have not noticed this on mine... can you describe it further?
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It's really not weight so much as how you hold it and use it. The iPad Air is something you keep in a large purse/ small backpack and hold with both hands. To type you place it on a table or a stand, or maybe propped on your lap. The Mini is something you can fit in a (large) coat pocket while you board a plane, you hold one handed to read, and you don't spend much time typing on.
In other words, are you trying to get an ultralight replacement for a laptop or an ultra high-powered Kindle? I use my Mini for travel and I always have a laptop anyway, so mini is the tool for me.
Oh god, and you forgot the 0.000034 mm mic hole in the back of the iPad. DEAL BREAKER for sure!
This! You have to actually look for the very thin black line or you won’t notice it at all. SMH
Can't see it on the Space Gray model with black bezels.
iPad Pro is the one for you then, it’s got lots of other upgrades over the Air besides FaceID. You’ll love it