Also it's funny how people say 'the Apple Watch proves that without Steve, Apple can't invent new things, only upgrade existing products.' Then you come to this thread and see all the iPad hate.
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iPad Market Share Falls Below 25% as Tablet Market Continues to Decline
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I see what you're saying but here's the thing. The work I do is more specialized requiring a pressure sensitive stylus. I've been doing digital art for many years and swear by the Wacom products for this exact reason and own an Intuos 4 ( old school model ) that connects to my iMac. Many professional illustrators and graphic designers use them.
Especially this Cintiq seen here: http://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-displays/cintiq-22-hd
It's one of the most popular and expensive devices for in-house studio use with the 22HD model. They also have a portable version but it costs close to $1,000. The problem is that one of the products they have is a bit limited in software compatibility and usually requires tethering to the desktop. I've seen one in the wild here and it's impressive. I can say with experience that the iPad does NOT even come close to this level of precision. Not one bit.
As for the laptop, I have an old school Titanium G4 Powerbook and have not upgraded to any laptops of today. For this reason, having a laptop makes no sense in my line of work. Graphic or web designers are more likely to use the laptop for coding or precise vector work. On the other hand, a professional tablet with pressure sensitivity and palm rejection ( iPad does not have this ) is perfect for digital artists or 3D modelers.
It's been years since I've had a good laptop or tablet and when I saw that the Surface could run my apps, it was a perfect replacement for my iPad. I did try to use Sketchbook and Procreate on the iPad which worked pretty good but didn't feel natural. I sensed something was missing from the equation. When Surface came out, the industrial design was sensible due to the kickstand which solved the problem of drawing without craning your neck and holding the stylus properly. With the iPad, I had to be mindful of my palm touching the screen which was annoying.
EDIT: And the ability to expand the Surface's storage is awesome so I don't have to rely on the Cloud entirely. It allows breathing room for the RAM to let the apps fly in smooth fashion. I've seen how Manga Studio worked on Surface via an artist's Twitch live stream and was blown away.
I think the nice thing about the Surface is the price point of it. Now, some may say I should get a new laptop and take my Intuos 4 model with me. I could but I won't because it's too cumbersome and a pain in the neck. Because of that, I used to do this exact same thing more than ten years ago, long before Apple released the iPad. I had a smaller 4 x 5 tablet and carried my Titanium in my backpack. It felt heavy. I would pull it out and plug both devices at a cafe tablet to work away. The problem was due to lack of space on the table. I used Photoshop, Illustrator and Corel Painter extensively on it at the time. Now I swear by Manga Studio, Mischief, and Sketchbook Pro with some Pixelmator/Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign when I need to.
With the Surface, it combines both. I think of it as a portable Wacom tablet tethered with a keyboard. In fact, the pressure sensitive levels on the Surface is pretty good ( about 256 or 512 levels, I believe ) while the Wacom lines go about 1,000 to 2,000 levels which the iPad cannot even touch. No, seriously. The only way to do that was to get a pressure sensitive pen built for iOS but they weren't very reliable and cost more requiring batteries. And yes, I know the Surface Pro had Wacom tech built-in but that changed when MS switched to N-Trig. The older models, I think, had up to 1,024 pressure sensitivity levels.
The Surface, I believe, solves the problem in moving my layered files back and forth from Windows to OS X. So if I'm home and it gets so damn hot up here in the day, I would take that Surface with me and continuing working on my files in a 'full desktop' mode at a local cafe, come back to my home studio and keep doing that on the sofa, or finish it up on my iMac. It's like a perfect studio solution ' on the go ' for my case scenario.
And I know a lot of professional illustrators/artists from various creative forums really like using the Surface for its versatility. I think having a Mac laptop would be a bit overkill and expensive especially when their current models are somewhat crippled. I just need something more precise and natural to draw on.
If Apple wants to really compete with Surface, they will NOT have a choice but to add a pressure sensitive pen and a larger screen, and possibly have an SD slot. iPad, to me, is too locked in and restrictive. There is no way in hell the iPad can run a full desktop version of Sketchbook Pro. The desktop version will always trump the 'stripped down' version on tablet in feature depth and versatility.
EDIT: by the way, the apps on my iMac that I work with can be downloaded on Surface without any cost to me because I already own the serial numbers and activate them with ease. This is one big reason the Surface succeeds in compatibility.
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I agree with what you say. The challenge to the manufacturers is to innovate enough in either the hardware or software space enough to make the upgrade attractive.
There are more uses to a touchscreen other than just UI navigation.
I've added a touchscreen to my desktop for use in Photoshop and Lightroom, and my process of developing photos has become so SO much better.
There are just some activities that lend themselves wonderfully for touch based systems. Especially with a stylus.
So ya, screw us for wanting MORE functionality right?
Out of real interest and without any other intent than curiosity: Do you have any current/recent sales figures of the surface ?
I LOVE my iPad and use it a lot. There are several apps that are neither that good (or sometimes even possible) on the iPhone nor on the Macbook, e.g. "The Orchestra", "The Elements", some astronomy apps like Skyguide. Also, for reading the newspaper or graphic novels much better than phone or laptop. For many people like me, the iPad is very useful and continues to be so. In due course I will upgrade my Ipad Air, just as I upgraded the ipad 2, but for now it is great.
I think the problem is that iPads couldn't replace the laptop due to one app per screen and small amounts of multi-tasking. iOS 9 looks to finally be tackling that. Split screen. Video on top of the screen. These things would have been nice long ago.
Also, my iPad Air runs extremely well. Despite not quite getting some of those iOS 9 features, I'm not anywhere near replacing it.
Also, my iPad Air runs extremely well. Despite not quite getting some of those iOS 9 features, I'm not anywhere near replacing it.
If this was the case they would have held off on the MacBook and released the device in October. Yes, Apple needs to understand that they are not separate categories but there's no sign that they haven't changed their minds on this when it's showing that they still believe this 100%.
That is an extremely narrow use case that they won't use as the main reason for making a device.
How is it a stat for the purpose of finance when they don't seem to care about profit, revenue, ASP or market share per segment.
Apple doesn't give a crap that its 25% of a group that : mostly sells under-powered tablets that cost under $50 crappy and lasts less than a year; that has less than 50% of its revenue and 20% of its profits split 100 ways.
They only care if they own users start buying these tablets and no longer buy their own when their Apple ones fall apart, otherwise it is irrelevant to their long term health.
Tablets have their place but it's rather limited.
Steve Jobs used his influence and skills as one of the worlds most convincing sales persons to annoint the iPad as "Magical & Revolutionary" his legions of followers fawned over him and "the game changer" he hyped.
Keeping the myth alive... at every opportunity he continued his praise as he crafted the "Post PC Era" storyline ... hanging on his every word the followers that believed he had the ability to know what's best for them when they didn't, bought his pitch hook line and sinker.
Fast forward to the present. The honeymoons faded, the Pitchman's gone, now the products got to stand on its own. It's going to keep selling Apple will see to that. They can't lose face, but it's big sales days seem to be over.
Steve Jobs used his influence and skills as one of the worlds most convincing sales persons to annoint the iPad as "Magical & Revolutionary" his legions of followers fawned over him and "the game changer" he hyped.
Keeping the myth alive... at every opportunity he continued his praise as he crafted the "Post PC Era" storyline ... hanging on his every word the followers that believed he had the ability to know what's best for them when they didn't, bought his pitch hook line and sinker.
Fast forward to the present. The honeymoons faded, the Pitchman's gone, now the products got to stand on its own. It's going to keep selling Apple will see to that. They can't lose face, but it's big sales days seem to be over.
Apple thinks it can forever milk people multiple times on similar devices! Or another way to look at it is Apple gives consumers the choice and okay to cannibalize itself as long as people buy Apple product!
And yes... MS's got the right idea with surface, just the hardware is bulky and unattractive, and software is not as smooth as iOS.
I have been buying every single iPhone... If they only added better camera and Force Touch, count me out, this year will be the first time I don't upgrade.
iPad: didn't upgrade last year, got turned off by their "iPad Mini 2.5" with adding TouchID only. That started the trend of my not upgrading Apple stuff yearly.
AppleWatch: been wearing it since it came out, I have to say that it is NOT worth it. Maybe WatchOS 2 will change my opinion.. right now only notifications and fitness function are useful, but not for the price tag (bad value). There is no app that runs "acceptable" on the watch. Everything lags big time and easier to just pull out my phone. (Yes, even the workout app, it lags loading up and scrolling.
Apple stopped making devices people want, and MS is attempting to fill that void. The market is ready for a hybrid device that consolidates both laptop and tablet.
I think you've summed it up quite nicely.
Yet there seems to be a rather large number of people here that find "pulling the phone out" to use it, horribly bothersome. Over and over many watch owners talk about convenience of leaving their phone tucked into their trousers. I view that questionably since prior to the watch that was never an issue, nor was it even brought up in the forums.
I bought a watch immediately upon release for one simple reason, for the fun of trying it out.
However the truth be known I knew before I ordered it that I would not keep it. Not because it wouldn't be a good product for some people, but I knew up front it couldn't possibly do anything I was interested in. Nor would it surprise me with some new Wiz Bang feature that I didn't know about but Apple's creative genius did. Yet because I could easily afford it, I could immediately resell it to anyone of a number of people in my circle of friends and associates I bought one, found it even less fun that I anticipated and resold it within a week.
To the topic at hand, I knew up front before even trying one, I would like an iPad as a secondary fun convenient way to surf the net. Beyond that it's useless for my needs.
Really interesting in depth answer. Hopefully the iPad Pro will solve most of your complaints
What I don't think is that Apple need to crowbar OS X onto an iPad. They might need to seriously work on iOS, beef up specs etc to encourage developers to make 'desktop class' apps for it. I hope that's what they will do.
You might once have said 'I'm opting for a MacBook Air because I want PhotoBooth and imovie' and now those are on iPad, you can pick iPad.
It felt like with iPad 2 and iPad 3 Apple were slowly working through the 'I'm getting a MacBook Air instead of an iPad because of X feature' list. Eventually, it seemed, they would be identical in function.
This seemed to stop wth iPad 4 and iPad mini: they just make them faster/thinner/smaller.
So are you saying that due to the increase of volume on the tablet market, it may seem that the iPad has declined if we calculate it as a percentage instead of as a number? That would make sense.
Also, many people bought an iPad 6 Plus to replace their tablets, as they don't want to carry it.
in my case, I carry both my iPhone 5s and iPad Air, everywhere I go, as I use it a lot. The iphone 5s just primarily as a communications device.
Windows Modern is years behind the ipad as a robust media client. I love my surface 3 and I am willing to put up with windows shortcomings on a tablet. I dont even care about the app and media ecosystem--which skews hugely to ios/ apple The surface hardware is first rate--imho
exactly... can't return it now lol. (Been months of having it)
I don't think i'll be getting another one if they release v2 next year.
yes. and the file system is a huge pain, and no usb is significant limitation for some uses. The ipad is a great product and its interesting that apple evangelical types want to make a productivity tool. I dont want to deal with all that so I use a surface
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Really interesting in depth answer. Hopefully the iPad Pro will solve most of your complaints
What I don't think is that Apple need to crowbar OS X onto an iPad. They might need to seriously work on iOS, beef up specs etc to encourage developers to make 'desktop class' apps for it. I hope that's what they will do.
You might once have said 'I'm opting for a MacBook Air because I want PhotoBooth and imovie' and now those are on iPad, you can pick iPad.
It felt like with iPad 2 and iPad 3 Apple were slowly working through the 'I'm getting a MacBook Air instead of an iPad because of X feature' list. Eventually, it seemed, they would be identical in function.
This seemed to stop wth iPad 4 and iPad mini: they just make them faster/thinner/smaller.
I want a real customizable widget screen that summarizes all the information i care about...
Its quite naive and pedantic to assume consumers bought iPad because Steve Jobs pitched it. Maybe you could start a company and sell a product that your followers will buy without giving it a second thought. I thought so, you won't be able to do that.