iPad 11: What's Next for Apple's Most Affordable Tablet

[DavidSchaub]

Jobs killed most products as soon as he moved back to Apple.
More products is not good.
supply chain nightmare.
confused customers on what to buy.
i think apple has too many products right now, they should trim them.

Apple may have had too many products in the mid 90s; but Apple is a much bigger company, and is much better run. More products are not bad. More price points are not bad.

Reducing customer choice is good for Apple's bottom line, not for customers. Customers have budgets and can work it out.

More products and more price points means more people with different budget limitations have options. E.g. Apple should have a monitor under $1500.

they need to hire more people to manage all these products.

This I absolutely agree with. Apple's product management seems to require high-level management of their products, massively limiting how many products Apple can work on (or even support) at once.

 

[sracer]

Apple may have had too many products in the mid 90s; but Apple is a much bigger company, and is much better run. More products are not bad. More price points are not bad.

Reducing customer choice is good for Apple's bottom line, not for customers. Customers have budgets and can work it out.

More products and more price points means more people with different budget limitations have options. E.g. Apple should have a monitor under $1500.


This I absolutely agree with. Apple's product management seems to require high-level management of their products, massively limiting how many products Apple can work on (or even support) at once.

I agree that more price points are a good thing... but not for everyone.

IMO more price points benefit those customers who want the low end of the product line. More price points allows Apple to go lower on the low end. This has been fantastic for me personally, since I can do everything on the iPad 10th gen that I was doing with my 12.9 iPad Pro (and I was doing quite a bit with it). Considering that the 1st gen started at $500 USD and the 10th gen can be had for $300, it's an absolute bargain IMO.

But for those on the upper end of the product line, more price points mean that Apple is no longer tethered to the economic gravity of having fewer price points. The top end is now in outer space.

For example. When there was just the iPad and iPad Pro. The 12.9 iPad Pro was around $800. The current 13" iPad Pro starts at $1200 with the top of the top far exceeding $2000. (I understand that there is a vast difference in performance and specs between the two)


Having said that, I obviously much prefer more price points. Heck, Apple add a few more... an entry level model in plastic for $100? I'd be all over that! 😂🤣😂

 

[Confused-User]

Just focus on the Mini right now Apple. It's more in need of a 'refresh' than the budget iPad is. And while you're at it: Stop offering 64GB storage in any tablets or phones! When you do this to customers, it's like the equivalent to what P Diddy did to those people.

That's just offensively stupid- which you'd likely understand if you knew a person who had survived such an event.

 

[ProbablyDylan]

Think my mom will be getting an iPad 11 when her Mini 5(?) starts showing its age. Smooth sailing so far.

 

[AlanMarron]

Think my mom will be getting an iPad 11 when her Mini 5(?) starts showing its age. Smooth sailing so far.

My wife has a mini 5 and rejected a new gen 9 because of its size and weight. Go carefully.

 

[Cervisia]

Jobs killed most products as soon as he moved back to Apple.
More products is not good.
supply chain nightmare.
confused customers on what to buy.
i think apple has too many products right now, they should trim them.
they need to hire more people to manage all these products.

When Jobs moved back Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy, only saved by Microsoft's money. Stop bringing this up to justify you not liking that other people have a choice.

 

[1909]

I just bought a new iPad Air 5 + cellular for 600 euros on Amazon, sold by Amazon. If Apple doesn't put at least an M1 chip in this new iPad, I hope the price difference will be significant, because there are still many new Air 5 models available out there, and I see a problem of overlapping in product portfolio

 

[Heat_Fan89]

I just bought a new iPad Air 5 + cellular for 600 euros on Amazon, sold by Amazon. If Apple doesn't put at least an M1 chip in this new iPad, I hope the price difference will be significant, because there are still many new Air 5 models available out there, and I see a problem of overlapping in product portfolio

I would think the next budget iPad would probably get an A Series SoC rather than an M1, just for marketing purposes. That's what the iPad Air's are now getting. Why buy an Air when you can buy an M1 budget iPad? Better yet, why buy the current M2 Air when an M1 iPad can do a similar job?

That's the problem you create when you make a product for everyone. Steve Jobs frowned on that and made one model that you could customize within, i.e. more RAM or storage.

 

[Cervisia]

A16 makes imminent sense, particularly with TSMC's Arizona plant coming online and producing A16's, allowing Apple to advertise in the American market about the CPU being "made here, in America".

That'll go into the AppleTv, and probably HomePod. Any production problems are low impact with these products. And everything else will go to A18 as a minimum.

 

[AlanMarron]

When Jobs moved back Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy, only saved by Microsoft's money. Stop bringing this up to justify you not liking that other people have a choice.

Stop the lies! The day that Microsoft 'saved' Apple

Last week, with Apple overtaking Microsoft in market capitalization — and with the floating of a crazy rumor that Microsoft's Steve Ballmer would talk up iPhone and Visual Studio 2010 at the keynote of next month's Apple Worldwide Developer Conference — news stories on the Web, in print and on...

www.zdnet.com

What was of interest to me back in those days was: 1) Jobs brought OPENSTEP with him, pushing BeOS to the side. BeOS was very advanced and ran like a bat-out-of-hell on PowerPC processors; 2) Jobs dumped Newton.

 

[bodonnell202]

That'll go into the AppleTv, and probably HomePod. Any production problems are low impact with these products. And everything else will go to A18 as a minimum.

There‘s really no good reason to move the Apple TV from an A15 to an A16 and the homepods are running Apple Watch (S series) chips and I highly doubt they will move them back to A series chips.

 

[Confused-User]

There‘s really no good reason to move the Apple TV from an A15 to an A16 and the homepods are running Apple Watch (S series) chips and I highly doubt they will move them back to A series chips.

At this point the cost differential between A15 and A16 is likely to be very close to zero- the A16 has 16e9 transistors instead of 15e9, but N4P has slightly better density, so area is going to be nearly the same. On the other hand, GPU performance is significantly improved - close to 30%. Depending on what Apple thinks they want to do with the next gen ATV, that might be worth doing.

As for the homepods, Apple may want to go big on AI over the next couple of years. The S chips won't do nearly as well for that as the A chips.

As with the iPad, I wouldn't want to make bets on this in either direction.

 

[jimmy_uk]

The wait for the standard iPad update is getting a little ridiculous now.

 

[deaglecat]

Prediction that iPad 11 will not launch until 2025 (supply chain panel rumours have also said this). That will put apple in less of a quandary regarding Apple AI support - in essence if you want AI in the near future then buy a more expensive pro model.

That imperative wil llessen over time, but I don't expect an iPad 11 until Q2 2025. Maybe launching alongside the new iPhone SE.

It is a shame because I need an upgrade.