Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Using nPlayer to play 1080p H264 AAC videos with hardware decoding enabled.

But sometimes just surfing the web on Safari made my 2018 iPad 6th get very hot.

I was using it for hours while plugged on power, maybe this damaged its battery?
If it is charging while in use, it should not damage the battery, but it will cause it to heat up much faster.

I don’t use nPlayer (anymore) but Infuse works fine for us.
 
Do we need 500 different iPad models? Fkn hell man this character Cook is so desperate for sales but so stingy to drop the price of the over priced iPads. Guy wants to drop the price of items by giving u jack **** in return. Just the ability to say hey I have an iPad.
[automerge]1589565700[/automerge]


literally NO ONE complained about “so few models” when we had only ONE model for YEARS under jobs.

yes the problem is he is creating a platform to make more by giving you less product in return. It’s quite easy to see actually. Under Jobs we got the best product at all times. This idiot increased the price of the best products by hundreds, sales went down, so he created a lesser product for the price we used to pay for the best. And now no ones buying the average iPad either so he’s giving you less...again. That’s how you ruin your brand.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: MandiMac
If it is charging while in use, it should not damage the battery, but it will cause it to heat up much faster.

I don’t use nPlayer (anymore) but Infuse works fine for us.
I also use nPlayer on my A11 3GB iPhone 8 Plus, no heat issues on it.

I think the battery of my 2018 iPad was damaged, I should have fixed it.
But I used that cheap iPad for 24 months, several hours/day, so it served its purpose!
 
Last edited:
Do we need 500 different iPad models? Fkn hell man this character Cook is so desperate for sales but so stingy to drop the price of the over priced iPads. Guy wants to drop the price of items by giving u jack **** in return. Just the ability to say hey I have an iPad.
[automerge]1589565700[/automerge]


literally NO ONE complained about “so few models” when we had only ONE model for YEARS under jobs.

yes the problem is he is creating a platform to make more by giving you less product in return. It’s quite easy to see actually. Under Jobs we got the best product at all times. This idiot increased the price of the best products by hundreds, sales went down, so he created a lesser product for the price we used to pay for the best. And now no ones buying the average iPad either so he’s giving you less...again. That’s how you ruin your brand.

There are four models of iPad, five if you count the Pros as two separate models. Any human can count the number of models on a single hand, barring a disability.

So NOT 500...

Sales pay the bills of the software dev along with the hardware dev. Product segmentation is a real thing in every industry, because a company’s existence is to SELL a product. Or a service.

You got what Jobs gave you, which wasn’t always “the best”, but it was the only, you just didn’t know any better. Most were just happy to get what they got.

No one wax’s poetic about the first gen MacBook Air. It was slow and expensive and only had one USB port. Tim Cook is simply trying to broaden the iPad appeal the same way we have more than one Mac, because people like a 16” MacBook Pro over a 13” MacBook Air.

This isn’t Soviet Russia where you got one choice of car or you hoofed it. Choice drives competition, sales and innovation.

Maybe the iPad isn’t for you.
 
There are four models of iPad, five if you count the Pros as two separate models. Any human can count the number of models on a single hand, barring a disability.

So NOT 500...

Sales pay the bills of the software dev along with the hardware dev. Product segmentation is a real thing in every industry, because a company’s existence is to SELL a product. Or a service.

You got what Jobs gave you, which wasn’t always “the best”, but it was the only, you just didn’t know any better. Most were just happy to get what they got.

No one wax’s poetic about the first gen MacBook Air. It was slow and expensive and only had one USB port. Tim Cook is simply trying to broaden the iPad appeal the same way we have more than one Mac, because people like a 16” MacBook Pro over a 13” MacBook Air.

This isn’t Soviet Russia where you got one choice of car or you hoofed it. Choice drives competition, sales and innovation.

Maybe the iPad isn’t for you.
I also think it's great to have so many different options of iPhones, iPads, Macs etc to choose from.

Problem is when that variety of options is used for evil purposes, like the MacBook Pro 13.3" with old 8th gen processor and 2133MHz LPDDR3 memory that only still exists to push the price of the 10th gen model to the sky!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Marlon DLTH :)
I also think it's great to have so many different options of iPhones, iPads, Macs etc to choose from.

Problem is when that variety of options is used for evil purposes, like the MacBook Pro 13.3" with old 8th gen processor and 2133MHz LPDDR3 memory that only still exists to push the price of the 10th gen model to the sky!

The 13” MacBook Pro has been $1799 and $1999 for almost 3-1/2 years now. They upped the price from the 2015, but doubled the base SSD and added the Touch Bar. They conceded to us with the nTB 1499 version

Apple has steadily worked that price back down, just as they did with the 2012-2015 13” Retina MacBook Pro which started at $1699 in Late 2012 (8/128) and settled down all the way at $1299.

They simply did the same thing here. There are no 9th Gen U-Series CPUs and Intel can barely keep up with 10th Gen CPUs using Iris Plus GPUs. What was Apple supposed to do? Reduce the $1799 version to $1299? Well, they basically did that when they introduced the 2019 13” MacBook Pro last year and gave us the Touch Bar, Iris Plus 645 GPUs and 15w 8th Gen CPUs.

All this complaining because they are 8th Gen is hilarious given there is no 9th Gen U-Series CPUs and 10nm has been and still is a dumpster fire. Is it any wonder Apple is moving to Arm-based in-house designs?
 
  • Like
Reactions: manu chao
The Air makes a lot of sense to me. I would not buy an entry level iPad for myself, but would have considered the Air (although I bought the prev. gen refurb 10.5” Pro instead for less money). The Air takes most of the best features of the Pro and offers it for less money, whereas the Pro gets all the cutting edge stuff... for $$$$.

I suspect the Air outsells the Pro, due to cost.

I still think the 10.5” Pro is a better deal than the Air 3. The Pro has 4GB of RAM. The A10X is still a beast. Quad speakers makes a big difference with sounds, IMO. It has a good amount of bass when playing music. Plus it offers a pretty high volume.
 
There are four models of iPad, five if you count the Pros as two separate models. Any human can count the number of models on a single hand, barring a disability.

So NOT 500...

Sales pay the bills of the software dev along with the hardware dev. Product segmentation is a real thing in every industry, because a company’s existence is to SELL a product. Or a service.

You got what Jobs gave you, which wasn’t always “the best”, but it was the only, you just didn’t know any better. Most were just happy to get what they got.

No one wax’s poetic about the first gen MacBook Air. It was slow and expensive and only had one USB port. Tim Cook is simply trying to broaden the iPad appeal the same way we have more than one Mac, because people like a 16” MacBook Pro over a 13” MacBook Air.

This isn’t Soviet Russia where you got one choice of car or you hoofed it. Choice drives competition, sales and innovation.

Maybe the iPad isn’t for you.
Just imagine the "paralysis by analysis" some folks deal with when buying a car. Some people were born at a different time. They would've loved Henry Ford's era when they could buy a Model T in any color as long as it was black. ;)

This paradigm shift by Apple has been in the works for at least 7 years. IMO, it is a good thing.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Zdigital2015
I wonder why the A11 had so little use - just the 8/8+/X - no iPads, iPods etc

The A11 was done on TSMC 10nm fabrication process. ( around 9/ 2017 )

That really wasn't a major targeted process. Lots of folks skipped it. 14nm (maybe refinement on 12nm) -> 7nm is the path most vendors took. I suspect it was relatively expensive for what it did and most vendors just skipped it. Apple has fat margins on the iPhone so they just took it. It also probably was a useful learning experience ( if have the deep pockets to pay for it). It also probably helped TSMC pay off the costs they sunk into it and that probably helps in getting to be one of the "first in line" on 7nm.

Apple A10X was also done on 10nm. (plain A10 on 16nm). (around 6 / 2017 ) .


Apple did sit on the A10X for a long time. ( got merged in with AppleTV 4K. which may have helped for volume at bit. ) That is about as close of an iPad (Pro) tie in as there was. .

As long as the iPhone 8's sold relatively well there was no reason to put it into an iPad to "soak up" excess chip production (that deviated from the estimates.) . And using the A10 long puts more money in the Scrooge McDuck money pit ( I think the competitive pressure was perceived by Apple as low from other tablets. There were getting their 'lunch' eaten by Chromebooks, but that was more a cost competition; not being outperformed by competition in "horsepower" driven sales. ).
 
Too many models out there. I don’t see why you’d need more than Pro (which already comes in two distinct sizes!), Air and Mini.


welcome to tim cooks apple, 5000 different magical products that are very similar , too many product lines that overlap and confusing naming schemes .
 
Do we need 500 different iPad models? Fkn hell man this character Cook is so desperate for sales but so stingy to drop the price of the over priced iPads. ....
[automerge]1589565700[/automerge]


literally NO ONE complained about “so few models” when we had only ONE model for YEARS under jobs.

The world changed from when Jobs first introduced the iPad. At the introduction Jobs compared them to "netbooks". The iPad was better than a netbook. Well netbooks got better and the dece8bedents in the guise of Chromebooks started to kick the "one model iPad " out of a substantive number of sales in several markets (including education; especially in the USA. )

Apple tried the iPhone gimmick of sell "last years iPhone cheaper" that didn't work out.

Apple moved to sell a smaller screen as "more affordable" and that largely didn't work either ( Chromebook with 11-15" screen way different than a barely 8" screen. Similarly phone-tablets phablets started to pick up ).

Apple needed an affordable ( not physically changing much ) iPad. That is the current model. It regularly goes on sale for $250 ( and Apple is probably loosing no money at all at that level. It is goosed to $329, but the intention is probably that the average price is sub $300. ( the higher "normal" list price is primarily to promote "you got a deal" notion when the $40-60 discounts kick in. ). Every 2-6 weeks the discount wave hits... not sure who is actually paying $329 who is paying attention at all.

The mini survived because there is subset of business and embedded uses that just keep it around ( cash register in small biz , portable flight maps , retail inventory tool. ). It is not for everybody and definitely not for the most cost constrained. If Apple is about the tweak the screen to smaller bezels, I suspect that model will probably go comatose again in substantive upgrades for a long while like the mini 4 did. It is smaller submarket and probably will get a smaller resource allocation over time.

The current "iPad Air" is basically where the iPad was at all along. In the > $400 range. Not competitive with affordable chrome books and mainstream laptops, bit in the zone where the iPad did fairly well. ( Android still drops the ball here after all these years. ). [ Stuff from the Pro line will probably dribble down here over time as it gets more affordable to include. ] I suspect the larger screen being rumored recently is more likely for the Air ( to stretch the gap over the "affordable" iPad.


iPad Pro is another market that didn't exist when Jobs did his presentation. Serious Windows 2-in-1 and tablets ( Surface Pro and more than a few 2-in-1s for every major PC vendor Dell/HP/Lenovo/etc. Also the $500-1000 Chromebooks (2-in-1 , tablets ) . ). Keyboard with trackpad now and a USB-C socket can plug peripherals into. A high fidelity pencil also ( which Jobs dismissed but always was particularly useful for those who do lots of drawing. (as opposed to select button or follow web link.)

yes the problem is he is creating a platform to make more by giving you less product in return.

Hooey. The iPad market is large enough that there are different segments of users out there.

It’s quite easy to see actually. Under Jobs we got the best product at all times.

This is largely revisionist history. iPad sales hit a wall before the diversity of the market was address. It was relatively large but stopped moving. The 'affordable' iPad has it at least growing again.


This idiot increased the price of the best products by hundreds, sales went down, so he created a lesser product for the price we used to pay for the best

The middle iPad didn't go up at all.

"...
Many observers were surprised by Apple's entry-level price point of $499 for the iPad, with general consensus having been that pricing would come in significantly higher. ... "

The current list price for an entry iPad Air ... $499 . Increased by hundreds when. Nothing increased. The name of the product in this position morphed a bit from plain "iPad" to "iPad Air" but this is still the same price point that the "holy" Jobs picked. Hasn't been moved at all.


. And now no ones buying the average iPad either so he’s giving you less...again. That’s how you ruin your brand.

LOL. the "affordable"/'edu' iPad is better than the first 3 generations of iPad in numerous ways and students can actually write on it to take notes. And it costs about $200 less that he price point that Jobs was charging. If want to pay the $499 price even better still.

Jobs was actually wrong here. "Netbooks" came and kicked butt. The iPad wasn't a "netbook killer". It took longer and shifting focus off of Windows ( to something more secure and utilitarian ), but the initiail wave of the iPad petered out after on the "one version for everyone" phase hit the wall.
 
The thing is, you have to view the product line-up from the perspective of many different types of consumer.

Part of the reason why the iPad continues to grow market share is precisely because they offer something for everyone, and by having even just a $170 gap between the regular iPad and the Air, that could be the difference between a sale and deal-breaker for some consumers.

Yes, sure. They don't want that big gap between the $329 iPad and the $799 iPad Pro. I just don't think they've found a great answer to how to fill it.

And, offering too many choices leads to paralysis and ultimately means the consumer won't buy any product at all.

Again, I can only speak for myself, but as a small business owner I have and would continue to purchase the regular iPad for trade show events. I know this device will get crud on it, get knocked around and will be handled by hundreds of people, so there is no value in spending $170 for a thinner, lighter device with better specs that have no impact on this scenario.

Even schools appreciate the cheaper model, that's their gateway to iOS.

It's really more the Air that I criticize, not the $329.

(Although I don't really like how the $329 has no suffix.)
 
Yeah, but both of those strike me as poor in-between-neither-here-nor-there fits.
The Air is faster, has a slightly larger screen and a laminated screen. I bought it because I figured it would serve me for longer and would be better for reading. It is indeed blazing fast and just great in general, especially for reading. The non-reflective laminated screen makes a big difference, in my opinion.

It fit my needs and expectations as a consumer. :)
 
I actually like Apple's iPad lineup, I feel like it's relatively well thought out in terms of product. I suspect one driving force for the 10.2 is they wanted a budget model, but they didn't want to default to small = budget like most other tablet makers. Apple seem to have realized that there is a group of consumers who buy a small tablet not because they want a cheap tablet, but because they want a small one... imagine that. Most small tablets are pieces of junk. The iPad mini is a top notch product with the A12 (it'd be even better with an A13 but I digress). I just ordered one myself, as I think it's the ideal size for gaming, couch browsing, etc. I know there may be a new one soon, but it could be a while, so I went with a refurb.

I do think Apple has a naming issue though, it is a little confusing. Maybe they should call it iPad Classic or something. Just iPad doesn't work, iPad is a range not a product. There's also some confusion, because for a long time, the MacBook Air has been the cheapest Mac laptop, but the iPad Air is not the cheapest iPad. Part of me wonders if they might be better served to get rid of the 10.2 iPad and just sell 2 generations of iPad Air -- the current generation and the last generation. So they'd have iPad Air, iPad Air 2, iPad Pro, and iPad Mini. *shrug*
 
  • Like
Reactions: Superman730
So they'd have iPad Air, iPad Air 2, iPad Pro, and iPad Mini. *shrug*

Why would they replace the current iPad Air with 2 older models, one of which can’t even run the latest os ;)

I think you mean iPad Air (3rd Generation) and iPad Air (4th Generation).
 
Given the limitations and restrictions of USB-C on iPads, I'm in no rush for that. The greatest value is being able to standardize on chargers. If iPads could utilize USB-C like what I can do on my Galaxy Tab A 10.1, Galaxy A20 phone, and Google Pixelbook, then I would definitely upgrade all of my iPads to models with USB-C.
Since I don't have an iPad Pro, I'm unfamiliar with the USB-C restrictions on the iPad. What is Apple limiting?
 
I feel non-laminated screens really annoy me more than they should.
I had an iPad 2018 and upgraded to the air the next year so I’d have the laminated display w/ True Tone, bigger size, and newer chip. I was much happier because the non laminated display annoyed me too much as well. It just felt really plastic like coming from an air 2 with a laminated display. Air 3 was a much better upgrade.
 
There are four models of iPad, five if you count the Pros as two separate models. Any human can count the number of models on a single hand, barring a disability.

So NOT 500...

Sales pay the bills of the software dev along with the hardware dev. Product segmentation is a real thing in every industry, because a company’s existence is to SELL a product. Or a service.

You got what Jobs gave you, which wasn’t always “the best”, but it was the only, you just didn’t know any better. Most were just happy to get what they got.

No one wax’s poetic about the first gen MacBook Air. It was slow and expensive and only had one USB port. Tim Cook is simply trying to broaden the iPad appeal the same way we have more than one Mac, because people like a 16” MacBook Pro over a 13” MacBook Air.

This isn’t Soviet Russia where you got one choice of car or you hoofed it. Choice drives competition, sales and innovation.

Maybe the iPad isn’t for you.

LMAO. OKAY say that to Android when they released 23452343242 phones every 3 months and they all failed one, by one, by one...while Jobs released 1, i repeat 1 i phone model once a year.

I love how you say the money is needed for "software dev and hardware dev." yet they are BILLIONS in cash. LOL.
 
Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the A13 instead? By then the the A13 would be a year old. The older the chips the longer Apple has to support outdated technologies in the future instead of keeping the momentum of the consumer and developers chugging along to the most current-ish versions.
 
Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the A13 instead? By then the the A13 would be a year old. The older the chips the longer Apple has to support outdated technologies in the future instead of keeping the momentum of the consumer and developers chugging along to the most current-ish versions.
iPad 8th Gen goes A12
iPad Air 4th Gen goes A13
iPad mini 6th Gen goes A13
iPad Pro goes A14X in early 2021

EDIT: The A12 is up to date technologically, where as the A11 was kind of an odd duck, notice how it disappeared relatively quickly and how few models actually use it.
 
Last edited:
Looks like I’m getting a new iPad this year.

The A12 should give it plenty of life. I don’t need a Pro and I really could care less about the lack of a laminated display. It never bothered me on any of my previous iPads.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jxdawg
I don’t get the complaining about Apple’s product lines. Literally every tech company has multiple lines with multiple options. People have brought up Dell in this thread. Ever try shopping for a Dell computer? Do you want an XPS, G series, Inspiron, Vostro, Latitude, Alienware, or “Precision Mobile Workstation”? And those are just the laptop lines....

Apple is no longer a niche product manufacturer. They are no longer a company that caters to tech enthusiasts. They are no longer a seller of exclusive devices. They are a consumer products company: Apple products are in the hands of literally millions, if not billions, of individual consumers and businesses. Sorry you can’t satisfy the requirements of that many different users with a single device. Never have and never could. Apple is not happy to lose profits by sacrificing sales to people who can’t afford or don’t have a use case for one type of iPad. Apple is in the business of making money, like every publicly traded company, not in the business of satisfying the odd demands of enthusiasts.

Dare I say the criticism of Apple not having one type of iPad boils down to some missing the idea of Apple products being exclusive and aspirational things, not regular tools in the hands of regular people (which they are now)? Also I laugh every time I read on here “Apple should make {insert apple product here} have these specs {insert the users personal specific needs here} at {price user imagined they should pay for it} and nothing else!”, or some variation on that theme. Again, everyone has different needs and they almost certainly aren’t the same as yours. Accept it. If you don’t want a base model iPad don’t buy one.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.