iPad App Downloads and Spending Reached Record Levels in Q1 2020

[DNichter]

As a MBP fanboi, my response would be:

If iPad is so much the future, then why have iPad sales steadily declined so much faster than the decline of laptops/desktops for years? (NB: laptops/desktops have been declining slightly because most home users who simply browse the internet and use email can now do that on a phone and don't need a full computer at home. All those that do real computer based work still have a computer. Sure, some now use an iPad instead, but not many in comparison, or at least not many that don't also have a computer too). Nah, they're a toy for most people who need to do any power work. The only way to make them a real computer is to put a real OS in them, add a real keyboard and trackpad (as they have done), and put enough RAM and SSD in them to make them useable for multitasking and storage, so basically make them a MBP, and at similar prices, with the only distinguishable feature being a removable keyboard. Or take a MB and add a touch screen, with the only feature difference between a MB and iPad is the removable keyboard on the later. So be careful what you wish for, as to pull it off, the prices of iPads will have to go up.

The MBP is a sports car, not a truck. The iPad is a tricycle.

To converge iPadOS and macOS would require removing the walled garden. So if you are going to do that, you'd just take macOS and add touch screen capabilities to it. You wouldn't take iPadOS and add all the features that had been removed from macOS in the first place. So again, if you're going to merge iPad and MB, you're just making iPad a MB with removable keyboard. In your analogy, turning the car into a truck. In my analogy, turning the tricycle into a sports car You're never going to dumb down the MB into an iPad without simply losing all those customers to Windows (and not because they will want to, because they will have to).


As a mature human, my real response is:

Their seems to be a war going on between MB fanbois and iPad fanbois, with both wishing the other didn't exist and all converted to the promised land. Both sides are delusional. MB fanbois love the form factor and capabilities, the physical keyboard and trackpad are the essential, efficient tools for fast volume data input. iPad fanbois love the form factor, the touch screen is essential and efficient for the fast, efficient GUI navigation, and data input is low volume, so doesn't need a physical keyboard, and most data input is either tapping a selection, or art based drawing input. They are two completely different use cases, and both see their use case as the sports car. So let's all make peace, and realise the both should continue to exist, and neither knows what the other needs best.

Apple isn't stupid, both are $5B revenue streams on their own, and both add to the ecosystem that drives more iPhone sales. Neither are going to replace the other, and neither are going to die off. Apple are merely beefing up the capabilities of iPad, and in an optional way, so people who need the beef, can pay for it if they want, e.g. the new expensive keyboard. They are also trying to merge apps to a degree where you can use apps on both iPad and MB, but I'm not sure if they are aiming for 100% compatibility, or merely an overlap for the simpler apps.

I can understand your perspective. I just think macOS has been crappy as of late.

 

[CarlJ]

I can understand your perspective. I just think macOS has been crappy as of late.

iPadOS is really nice for a lot of things, but it sucks as a Unix workstation. It all depends on what you need to do. And I need something where I can have a bunch of local terminal sessions on-screen at the same time, along with Vim windows and browser windows.

 

[DNichter]

iPadOS is really nice for a lot of things, but it sucks as a Unix workstation. It all depends on what you need to do. And I need something where I can have a bunch of local terminal sessions on-screen at the same time, along with Vim windows and browser windows.

That’s fair, but not many people need what you need. I’d imagine Apple are ultimately deciding whether they cater to the masses or appease to a subset of users.

 

[Darth Tulhu]

As a MBP fanboi, my response would be:

If iPad is so much the future, then why have iPad sales steadily declined so much faster than the decline of laptops/desktops for years? (NB: laptops/desktops have been declining slightly because most home users who simply browse the internet and use email can now do that on a phone and don't need a full computer at home. All those that do real computer based work still have a computer. Sure, some now use an iPad instead, but not many in comparison, or at least not many that don't also have a computer too). Nah, they're a toy for most people who need to do any power work. The only way to make them a real computer is to put a real OS in them, add a real keyboard and trackpad (as they have done), and put enough RAM and SSD in them to make them useable for multitasking and storage, so basically make them a MBP, and at similar prices, with the only distinguishable feature being a removable keyboard. Or take a MB and add a touch screen, with the only feature difference between a MB and iPad is the removable keyboard on the later. So be careful what you wish for, as to pull it off, the prices of iPads will have to go up.

The MBP is a sports car, not a truck. The iPad is a tricycle.

To converge iPadOS and macOS would require removing the walled garden. So if you are going to do that, you'd just take macOS and add touch screen capabilities to it. You wouldn't take iPadOS and add all the features that had been removed from macOS in the first place. So again, if you're going to merge iPad and MB, you're just making iPad a MB with removable keyboard. In your analogy, turning the car into a truck. In my analogy, turning the tricycle into a sports car You're never going to dumb down the MB into an iPad without simply losing all those customers to Windows (and not because they will want to, because they will have to).


As a mature human, my real response is:

Their seems to be a war going on between MB fanbois and iPad fanbois, with both wishing the other didn't exist and all converted to the promised land. Both sides are delusional. MB fanbois love the form factor and capabilities, the physical keyboard and trackpad are the essential, efficient tools for fast volume data input. iPad fanbois love the form factor, the touch screen is essential and efficient for the fast, efficient GUI navigation, and data input is low volume, so doesn't need a physical keyboard, and most data input is either tapping a selection, or art based drawing input. They are two completely different use cases, and both see their use case as the sports car. So let's all make peace, and realise the both should continue to exist, and neither knows what the other needs best.

Apple isn't stupid, both are $5B revenue streams on their own, and both add to the ecosystem that drives more iPhone sales. Neither are going to replace the other, and neither are going to die off. Apple are merely beefing up the capabilities of iPad, and in an optional way, so people who need the beef, can pay for it if they want, e.g. the new expensive keyboard. They are also trying to merge apps to a degree where you can use apps on both iPad and MB, but I'm not sure if they are aiming for 100% compatibility, or merely an overlap for the simpler apps.

I think you need to calm down and slowly, carefully reread my post.
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macOS is the best current desktop OS, I agree, but it’s become so bloated and broken over the years. Add a menu bar, proper windowing, better multitasking, external drive support, and more pro apps to iPadOS and it would be a better solution in my eyes. I know macOS isn’t going anywhere, but it needs to evolve. I’m hoping for major software changes and new form factors when they move to their own custom chips.

I don't think the replacement for an OS designed for keyboard and mouse is an OS designed from the ground up to be touch-based.

I agree that macOS has become bloated over the years, but it's because Apple didn't have the in-between, average-user-friendly OS that the iPad's OS has now very recently become.

Apple has been trying perhaps a bit too hard to bring features from iOS to the Mac, but now that iPad OS has become the computer most post-PC'ers need, Apple can focus on making macOS a REAL workhorse for pros that need to get "old-school" computing done, without so much candy coating.

Pros would like a rock-solid, compatible, as-open-as-possible OS that allows them to work as they're used to. In other words, macOS doesn't need to change as much as iOS or iPadOS does.

 

[Abazigal]

As a MBP fanboi, my response would be:

If iPad is so much the future, then why have iPad sales steadily declined so much faster than the decline of laptops/desktops for years? (NB: laptops/desktops have been declining slightly because most home users who simply browse the internet and use email can now do that on a phone and don't need a full computer at home. All those that do real computer based work still have a computer. Sure, some now use an iPad instead, but not many in comparison, or at least not many that don't also have a computer too). Nah, they're a toy for most people who need to do any power work. The only way to make them a real computer is to put a real OS in them, add a real keyboard and trackpad (as they have done), and put enough RAM and SSD in them to make them useable for multitasking and storage, so basically make them a MBP, and at similar prices, with the only distinguishable feature being a removable keyboard. Or take a MB and add a touch screen, with the only feature difference between a MB and iPad is the removable keyboard on the later. So be careful what you wish for, as to pull it off, the prices of iPads will have to go up.

The MBP is a sports car, not a truck. The iPad is a tricycle.

To converge iPadOS and macOS would require removing the walled garden. So if you are going to do that, you'd just take macOS and add touch screen capabilities to it. You wouldn't take iPadOS and add all the features that had been removed from macOS in the first place. So again, if you're going to merge iPad and MB, you're just making iPad a MB with removable keyboard. In your analogy, turning the car into a truck. In my analogy, turning the tricycle into a sports car You're never going to dumb down the MB into an iPad without simply losing all those customers to Windows (and not because they will want to, because they will have to).


As a mature human, my real response is:

Their seems to be a war going on between MB fanbois and iPad fanbois, with both wishing the other didn't exist and all converted to the promised land. Both sides are delusional. MB fanbois love the form factor and capabilities, the physical keyboard and trackpad are the essential, efficient tools for fast volume data input. iPad fanbois love the form factor, the touch screen is essential and efficient for the fast, efficient GUI navigation, and data input is low volume, so doesn't need a physical keyboard, and most data input is either tapping a selection, or art based drawing input. They are two completely different use cases, and both see their use case as the sports car. So let's all make peace, and realise the both should continue to exist, and neither knows what the other needs best.

Apple isn't stupid, both are $5B revenue streams on their own, and both add to the ecosystem that drives more iPhone sales. Neither are going to replace the other, and neither are going to die off. Apple are merely beefing up the capabilities of iPad, and in an optional way, so people who need the beef, can pay for it if they want, e.g. the new expensive keyboard. They are also trying to merge apps to a degree where you can use apps on both iPad and MB, but I'm not sure if they are aiming for 100% compatibility, or merely an overlap for the simpler apps.

My response to this is because the Mac line has been around way longer than the ipad.

This means that when the ipad first came out, you would have a huge surge of people buying them because there had never been a product like the ipad before. However, the replacement cycle of an ipad is closer to that of a laptop than a smartphone (3-5 years rather than 2), and so the dramatic drop in ipad sales afterwards is simply people holding on to their iPads longer and not upgrading as often.

In addition, iPads are not so much replacing PCs as much as they are augmenting them. I have both an iPad Pro and an iMac at home, but I definitely clock more hours on my ipad than my iMac. From a sales perspective, it doesn’t matter to Apple because a sale is a sale either way, but the ipad has indeed taken on many tasks that I used to have to reply solely on a laptop or desktop for, for the lack of a better alternative.

Conversely, PCs have been around for decades, and the number sold would be more or less stagnant (or slightly slower, as the replacement cycle lengths due to existing PC hardware more than sufficing for your normal everyday stuff).

I said it before in another thread, and I will say it again. When Steve Jobs said the iPad would be the car and the Mac would be the pickup truck, I believe he too envisioned a future where it was 90% iOS and 10% OS X (as he called it then).

Getting there is only a matter of time. And probably sooner rather than later. PCs are not going anywhere, but they will be increasingly used for more niche use cases as tablets (and even smartphones) increasingly grow more capable and take on more of the tasks that once could only be done on a PC.

And let’s be honest - does no one see the hypocrisy of how "productivity" is often limited to programming, excel, and CAD, as if no other type of profession exists? I am a teacher and apart from using my 27” imac for daily zoom sessions with my students (mainly for the larger screen), everything else can be run off my ipad. Preparing lesson plans, recording screencasts, posting assignments on google classroom and my school’s e-learning platform etc.

For me, the main draw of the ipad is that it runs the same OS and apps as my iphone, so there is that sense of familiarity and consistency.

 

[sakagura]

Who knew people stuck at home would play with gadgets more while they sit in depression from lack of movement and income. Android tablets record apps downloaded too! OMG. Miracles.

 

[GeoSciGuy]

Apple needs to take complete advantage of this reversal and keep this trending upward. Businesses and education were already starting to embrace the iPad, but now that businesses are forced to have their employees work from home and colleges are forced to have classes online, App Developers have a much larger customer base.

Businesses that previously never planned to make apps are now considering making apps or already have due to this major global disruption. Companies like Pearson are likely to have dramatically accelerated the timeline of their educational apps.

Digital textbooks are the future. Apple needs to capture that market. No more CDs attached to text books. The videos will be imbedded into the images in the text book. The Figure pictures in science textbooks can now be animated, making it easier to grasp the more complex concepts.

If Apple allows people to buy iPads on Apple Card credit, so many more people will have iPads that there will be great improvement in the software, as app developers compete for new marketshare. In addition, Apple could create an iPad with the power of a mobile workstation. It would be expensive, but plenty of people would buy it, especially if they could on credit. Autodesk already makes AutoCAD for iPad, so might as well steel marketshare from the makers of mobile workstations running Windows.

I hope this reversal is permanent, because the iPad had so much more potential!

 

[Darth Tulhu]

Apple needs to take complete advantage of this reversal and keep this trending upward. Businesses and education were already starting to embrace the iPad, but now that businesses are forced to have their employees work from home and colleges are forced to have classes online, App Developers have a much larger customer base.

Businesses that previously never planned to make apps are now considering making apps or already have due to this major global disruption. Companies like Pearson are likely to have dramatically accelerated the timeline of their educational apps.

Digital textbooks are the future. Apple needs to capture that market. No more CDs attached to text books. The videos will be imbedded into the images in the text book. The Figure pictures in science textbooks can now be animated, making it easier to grasp the more complex concepts.

If Apple allows people to buy iPads on Apple Card credit, so many more people will have iPads that there will be great improvement in the software, as app developers compete for new marketshare. In addition, Apple could create an iPad with the power of a mobile workstation. It would be expensive, but plenty of people would buy it, especially if they could on credit. Autodesk already makes AutoCAD for iPad, so might as well steel marketshare from the makers of mobile workstations running Windows.

I hope this reversal is permanent, because the iPad had so much more potential!

That's it right there: the iPad has loads of POTENTIAL.

I remember Apple's "back to the Mac" campaign back in the Lion days, where iOS features where being introduced into OS X. I think the ACTUAL way forward for Apple is the other way around: bring Mac features to iOS.

I believe Apple FINALLY realized this, hence iPadOS.

The Mac is a mature product. It's iOS that has room to grow.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

My response to this is because the Mac line has been around way longer than the ipad.

This means that when the ipad first came out, you would have a huge surge of people buying them because there had never been a product like the ipad before. However, the replacement cycle of an ipad is closer to that of a laptop than a smartphone (3-5 years rather than 2), and so the dramatic drop in ipad sales afterwards is simply people holding on to their iPads longer and not upgrading as often.

In addition, iPads are not so much replacing PCs as much as they are augmenting them. I have both an iPad Pro and an iMac at home, but I definitely clock more hours on my ipad than my iMac. From a sales perspective, it doesn’t matter to Apple because a sale is a sale either way, but the ipad has indeed taken on many tasks that I used to have to reply solely on a laptop or desktop for, for the lack of a better alternative.

Conversely, PCs have been around for decades, and the number sold would be more or less stagnant (or slightly slower, as the replacement cycle lengths due to existing PC hardware more than sufficing for your normal everyday stuff).

I said it before in another thread, and I will say it again. When Steve Jobs said the iPad would be the car and the Mac would be the pickup truck, I believe he too envisioned a future where it was 90% iOS and 10% OS X (as he called it then).

Getting there is only a matter of time. And probably sooner rather than later. PCs are not going anywhere, but they will be increasingly used for more niche use cases as tablets (and even smartphones) increasingly grow more capable and take on more of the tasks that once could only be done on a PC.

And let’s be honest - does no one see the hypocrisy of how "productivity" is often limited to programming, excel, and CAD, as if no other type of profession exists? I am a teacher and apart from using my 27” imac for daily zoom sessions with my students (mainly for the larger screen), everything else can be run off my ipad. Preparing lesson plans, recording screencasts, posting assignments on google classroom and my school’s e-learning platform etc.

For me, the main draw of the ipad is that it runs the same OS and apps as my iphone, so there is that sense of familiarity and consistency.

"...he too envisioned a future where it was 90% iOS and 10% OS X (as he called it then)... Getting there is only a matter of time."

But it's not getting there. iPad sales have been continuously and steadily dropping since 2014 when they peaked at more sales than macs, whereas mac sales have been pretty much steady since 2014 and are now higher than iPads. The absolute opposite of "getting there" is happening. I think what has actually happened is more and more people are buying bigger phones, and realise that they don't need the bigger screen of an iPad, and the cost of a second device, and so have ditched the iPad. And the number of people who actually use an iPad for real work is small in the first place, and not growing, because it is so limiting compared to a mac. But hey, maybe the new magic keyboard will change that, even though an iPad with magic keyboard is now heavier (and still far more limited) than a MBA. Wake me up when the "getting there" happens.
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I can understand your perspective. I just think macOS has been crappy as of late.

Oh I agree with that!!!

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

That’s fair, but not many people need what you need. I’d imagine Apple are ultimately deciding whether they cater to the masses or appease to a subset of users.

If they cut out the "subset of users" that do real work, then they will find many corporations simply ditching mac. They know this, as it is what started happening a few years ago as they failed to upgrade pro capabilities, which resulted in Apple starting it's Pro Workflow team. This team hired a bunch of "subset of users" pros, and worked with them to work out what "pros" needed, and thus came up with machines such as the Mac Pro, and presumably the 16" MBP and iMac Pro.

And besides, the entire beauty of MacOS is that it is built on Unix, so to kill of the Unix terminal you're killing MacOS entirely. Unix is solid as a rock, and super powerful. Killing it off would be utter stupidity.

 

[DNichter]

If they cut out the "subset of users" that do real work, then they will find many corporations simply ditching mac. They know this, as it is what started happening a few years ago as they failed to upgrade pro capabilities, which resulted in Apple starting it's Pro Workflow team. This team hired a bunch of "subset of users" pros, and worked with them to work out what "pros" needed, and thus came up with machines such as the Mac Pro, and presumably the 16" MBP and iMac Pro.

And besides, the entire beauty of MacOS is that it is built on Unix, so to kill of the Unix terminal you're killing MacOS entirely. Unix is solid as a rock, and super powerful. Killing it off would be utter stupidity.

Apple doesn't have to cut out people that do "real work", plenty of people do real work on iPadOS today. The goal should be to migrate those with specialized needs to iPadOS through a number of changes/improvements.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

Apple doesn't have to cut out people that do "real work", plenty of people do real work on iPadOS today. The goal should be to migrate those with specialized needs to iPadOS through a number of changes/improvements.

You're not getting it. The changes/improvements needed to iPadOS would be to turn it into macOS. Do you really want that? If so, then what you really want is for macOS to be available on iPad. Which is a fair enough thing to want, but then they'll need to put a heap more RAM in iPads so that macOS will run properly, and thus making your iPad a heap more expensive. Are you sure you really want this? Or are you actually quite happy with iPadOS, as us mac users are with macOS, and we should just leave it all alone and both sides should stop wishing for a subset of users with different needs than us to convert to our favourite platform?

 

[DNichter]

You're not getting it. The changes/improvements needed to iPadOS would be to turn it into macOS. Do you really want that? If so, then what you really want is for macOS to be available on iPad. Which is a fair enough thing to want, but then they'll need to put a heap more RAM in iPads so that macOS will run properly, and thus making your iPad a heap more expensive. Are you sure you really want this? Or are you actually quite happy with iPadOS, as us mac users are with macOS, and we should just leave it all alone and both sides should stop wishing for a subset of users with different needs than us to convert to our favourite platform?

No, I just want to see continuous improvements to iPadOS. Proper windowing, external display support, better multitasking, and more pro apps is all I am looking for. I don’t want anything to do with macOS in its current form, it’s been terrible the last few years. I just think it makes business sense for Apple to move to a more locked down OS and leave all the legacy junk behind.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

No, I just want to see continuous improvements to iPadOS. Proper windowing, external display support, better multitasking, and more pro apps is all I am looking for. I don’t want anything to do with macOS in its current form, it’s been terrible the last few years. I just think it makes business sense for Apple to move to a more locked down OS and leave all the legacy junk behind.

"move to a more locked down OS" - dude, if that's what you want, then good for you, you've got it already with iOS and iPadOS, but stop bothering us mac users, because the last thing on earth we want or need is a more locked down OS. We too can buy and iPad with magic keyboard if we wanted it, but we don't. Even if they put macOS on an iPad, I still wouldn't buy one. I don't own, need, or want one, the form factor of a MB is perfect for me, and the non-locked-down macOS is perfect for me. If Apple locked down macOS with a walled garden, then myself and a whole swathe of mac users would be forced to move to Windows or Linux. And you don't own, need, or want a mac, so why do you even care what OS runs on one? Just go away and stop bothering us mac users with your ridiculous mac opinions.

I agree with you that macOS's quality control has gone to the dogs lately, but that has nothing to do with it being locked down or not, it's simply a lack of quality control as a priority. It would make business sense for Apple to slow down with adding new features to macOS, and clean up all the bugs and get it solid again first. FYI, I am still running High Sierra, which is pretty solid, and I'm happy with it. I might move to Mojave when I get around to it. But Catalina isn't remotely on my radar at the moment, entirely due to all the bugs and problems on it.

And I already said it, the reason why iPadOS/iOS doesn't have better multitasking is simply because to do so requires more RAM. The more applications you have open, the more RAM is required to hold them. Similarly, the more complex the apps you run, the more RAM you need. So if Adobe to ported a full fledged version of Photoshop, it would need a lot more RAM. More RAM will add to the price. So far Apple has deliberately constricted multitasking so as to keep iPhones and iPads highly responsive and lag free with the limited RAM on them. If it had multitasking from the beginning, then the phones would lag to high hell as you opened more apps. This is why macs have 8/16/32/64+ GB of RAM. The bigger your workload needs, the more RAM you need. Apple could add it, especially to iPads, but it will cost more, and take up more space.

 

[DNichter]

"move to a more locked down OS" - dude, if that's what you want, then good for you, you've got it already with iOS and iPadOS, but stop bothering us mac users, because the last thing on earth we want or need is a more locked down OS. We too can buy and iPad with magic keyboard if we wanted it, but we don't. Even if they put macOS on an iPad, I still wouldn't buy one. I don't own, need, or want one, the form factor of a MB is perfect for me, and the non-locked-down macOS is perfect for me. If Apple locked down macOS with a walled garden, then myself and a whole swathe of mac users would be forced to move to Windows or Linux. And you don't own, need, or want a mac, so why do you even care what OS runs on one? Just go away and stop bothering us mac users with your ridiculous mac opinions.

I agree with you that macOS's quality control has gone to the dogs lately, but that has nothing to do with it being locked down or not, it's simply a lack of quality control as a priority. It would make business sense for Apple to slow down with adding new features to macOS, and clean up all the bugs and get it solid again first. FYI, I am still running High Sierra, which is pretty solid, and I'm happy with it. I might move to Mojave when I get around to it. But Catalina isn't remotely on my radar at the moment, entirely due to all the bugs and problems on it.

And I already said it, the reason why iPadOS/iOS doesn't have better multitasking is simply because to do so requires more RAM. The more applications you have open, the more RAM is required to hold them. Similarly, the more complex the apps you run, the more RAM you need. So if Adobe to ported a full fledged version of Photoshop, it would need a lot more RAM. More RAM will add to the price. So far Apple has deliberately constricted multitasking so as to keep iPhones and iPads highly responsive and lag free with the limited RAM on them. If it had multitasking from the beginning, then the phones would lag to high hell as you opened more apps. This is why macs have 8/16/32/64+ GB of RAM. The bigger your workload needs, the more RAM you need. Apple could add it, especially to iPads, but it will cost more, and take up more space.

I said it would make business sense for Apple, not that all the Mac users would want that. I disagree, I think part of the reason Apple has quality issues with macOS is because they need to cater to legacy users. I was more so thinking about how multitasking is implemented on iPadOS, it’s good, but could be better. Proper windowing would help and yes, more RAM will be needed once more Pro apps come to iPadOS. My only point is that macOS is their weakest platform and more control would help. They are getting there with iPadOS, I could see it being very useful on desktops and laptops if implemented the right way through the things I mentioned.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

I said it would make business sense for Apple, not that all the Mac users would want that. I disagree, I think part of the reason Apple has quality issues with macOS is because they need to cater to legacy users. I was more so thinking about how multitasking is implemented on iPadOS, it’s good, but could be better. Proper windowing would help and yes, more RAM will be needed once more Pro apps come to iPadOS. My only point is that macOS is their weakest platform and more control would help. They are getting there with iPadOS, I could see it being very useful on desktops and laptops if implemented the right way through the things I mentioned.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Over and out.

 

[DNichter]

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Over and out.

I forgot how sensitive a topic Apple moving on from a diminishing OS is for the diehards.