Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iPad Love affair with tablets over?

F

Fattytail

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 11, 2012
902
242
What do you guys think of this recent article about tablets on the decline? Interesting thoughts. I don't entirely agree with the conclusion, but I do think that the natural evolution of technology is such that we will eventually end up with something the size of a phone that can do everything. It's just a matter of what size screens we want to project our content on to.

http://recode.net/2014/02/06/our-love-affair-with-the-tablet-is-over/
 
I may agree the initial wow factor has cooled off but from what I can tell they are a hot item now and should be for a while. Tablets are SOOOOOO much more useful and pleasant than those teeny weeny phones. :D

I'm sure as years go on something else may come along but for a while yet tablets will sell like crazy.
 
A guy who apparently has had at least six jobs in the last decade probably isn't the most reliable source for what is - or is not - going to be a long-term trend.

I'm sure Mr Bilimoria is a smart guy, but he is looking at "tablets" (a word I thoroughly detest) purely through his experience at Netflix. Guess what, Mr Bilimoria - my iPad is the reason I signed up for Netflix in the first place. Yeah - I now watch a big chunk via my AppleTV - but what the tablet form factor can - and will - do, has only just started its journey.

In case you doubt me, Mr Bilimoria, let me tell you about trying to watch Netflix anything (House of Cards, Lillyhammer, The Usual Suspects, reruns of Louie) on a mobile phone. Its waste of time. At best a novelty to kill a few minutes if you are stuck on a bus.

Mobile is great. But sometimes you just need square inches of screen real estate. If you are reading War and Peace or the New York Times its a much better experience on a tablet. If you are composing hip-hop riffs in Garageband - its better on an iPad than an iPhone. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Talk to me in another ten years if you really think tablets are over.

They've only just begun.
 
s2mikey said:
I may agree the initial wow factor has cooled off but from what I can tell they are a hot item now and should be for a while. Tablets are SOOOOOO much more useful and pleasant than those teeny weeny phones. :D

I'm sure as years go on something else may come along but for a while yet tablets will sell like crazy.
Click to expand...

Had my share of tablets and I'm done since I got a Note 3. :D
 
The tablet is still a very hot product category. The smartphone market has cooled off. The people who want them already have them and the people who don't stick with basic phones. But you still won't find a tablet in every household, let alone one for each person the way you do with smartphones or laptops. There's still a lot of room for growth and I don't believe the market has reached the saturation point yet.

I agree with the author's main assertion that the love affair with tablets is over, but only for people who already own one. He's arguing that the market will soon decline because nobody wants one anymore, and I don't agree with that assumption.
 
People keep tablets longer than other tech so its probably true. I have 3 1st gen iPads in my house that are used and the family who uses them don't want anything else yet.
 
looks promising to me... is our affair with smartphones over?
ChartOfTheDay_25072012_The_Great_Start_of_Apple_s_iPad_n.jpg
 
I can't see tablets decreasing--in fact I see more and more of them when I travel. I can, however, see consumers lengthening the time between upgrades. That's what I have done with my MacBook and iPad. For what I do, I just do not always need faster. I use both mainly for recreation, so if Photoshop takes a few extra seconds to render it's no big deal. For me, the iPad has been the ultimate travel toy--with a touch of business thrown in.
 
JonMPLS said:
I can't see tablets decreasing--in fact I see more and more of them when I travel. I can, however, see consumers lengthening the time between upgrades. That's what I have done with my MacBook and iPad. For what I do, I just do not always need faster. I use both mainly for recreation, so if Photoshop takes a few extra seconds to render it's no big deal. For me, the iPad has been the ultimate travel toy--with a touch of business thrown in.
Click to expand...

The Mac side makes a lot of sense. Unless you need a Mac Pro, if you got an i7 several years ago, and have upgraded to an SSD and upped the RAM, you are still hauling arse. The advancements have been minor, except for the transition to SSD, for most users I'd say.

On the iPad side, the ram is the limiting factor for a lot of apps. Ask ipad1 owners, and they would nearly all say that the #1 thing holding the 1 back is it's lack of ram. Apple knows this and has built in obsolescence with 1 gig of ram in the air/rMini.
 
Fattytail said:
What do you guys think of this recent article about tablets on the decline? Interesting thoughts. I don't entirely agree with the conclusion, but I do think that the natural evolution of technology is such that we will eventually end up with something the size of a phone that can do everything. It's just a matter of what size screens we want to project our content on to.

http://recode.net/2014/02/06/our-love-affair-with-the-tablet-is-over/
Click to expand...

He misses that a smart phone and a tablet really aren't that different. That smart phone he loves is just as incapable of replacing his laptop etc.

I think that we are moving to an age where smart phones and tablets aren't seen as special but just part of life. Same as say when the Dowager Countess got her first telegram or saw her first telephone and 50 years later they just were.
 
The guy has apparently never taken a class with the option of using a phone, tablet and computer.

Your phone is worthless for most things learning-related. I mean you can do many tasks with it, but who is taking notes on their phone? Only if you can record audio and/or video. You're not writing or typing on the thing.

Your notebook computer can be quite handy. But if you use it for digital textbooks, that keyboard is all sorts of in the way and you can't maximize your screen. It's great for taking notes, but you're probably also going to have a tablet for digital textbooks if you have a choice.

I use my iPad a ton for classes. I can download presentations -- either just PDFs or PowerPoint-style -- from the Web. I can then either just read them or make notes on them. I bought the textbooks I could -- except for a chem lab book -- digitally, buying or renting. I can carry them anywhere at just 1.5 pounds and it was cheaper than the real book options. Kindle won't let me easily print them, but I can make screenshots of pages and print them through iPhoto. If I needed to, I could take my wireless keyboard to write notes. But the classes I need that for don't have decent desks for taking notes -- half-ass desks as I call them, not actual tables -- so that's out.

I used to like my iPad a lot. Now I love it. The fact that it's an iPad 3 and so underpowered for the retina display has me almost needing an iPad Air because of all the lockups. I was easily content before, but now it's highly frustrating.
 
I use my iPad as a way to browse the web for non essential reasons, looking up movies, a quick read of the news, send a short email etc. For those who don't need a computer they'll likely rely more on their tablet.

As usual Steve Jobs hyped the iPad excessively, thereby winding up the Apple devotees tight as a drum. Demand was astronomical, since his word was gospel. Now that the newness has worn off, tablet sales will begin to fade to a level that matches their actual value. Not some irrelevant impulse purchase, just because others have one.

They'll always have a place in the market, but they won't be replacing other products.
 
sixrom said:
I use my iPad as a way to browse the web for non essential reasons, looking up movies, a quick read of the news, send a short email etc. For those who don't need a computer they'll likely rely more on their tablet.

As usual Steve Jobs hyped the iPad excessively, thereby winding up the Apple devotees tight as a drum. Demand was astronomical, since his word was gospel. Now that the newness has worn off, tablet sales will begin to fade to a level that matches their actual value. Not some irrelevant impulse purchase, just because others have one.

They'll always have a place in the market, but they won't be replacing other products.
Click to expand...

I dunno about that. I don't think they have to replace anything. They only have to be what they are and so far they are doing a great job of it. I wouldn't give Steve Jobs that much credit.... People buy things because they want them, not because Steve said so. Tablets are perfect for most basic users and handle the web, email and gaming as good as anything. They are easy to use, very portable, and quite slick. There will always be a market for that.

Phones are too small and stupidly expensive with contracts and all that. Laptops are a thousand bucks or more for a good one. The tablet fills the rather wide gap between the phone and the laptop.
 
Ultimately the holy grail of technology is that all of these screens just become thin clients and we run everything or most everything from the cloud. I think we're still at least a decade away if not more of fulfilling that vision. And perhaps we never get there simply because there's always some benefit to having data stored locally.

In the short term, it's really about screen size. For those of us who've become accustomed to using a screen that's bigger than any phablet out there, tablets will always be useful. The more powerful tablets get and the more powerful that tablet software gets, the less we'll be apt to use our PCs.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back