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iPad What made you want an iPad?

iOS is the easiest mobile software to use IMO. iPads are the highest quality tablet on the market as well IMO. It works great and I, knock on wood, never had a problem with it (except on the iPad Air crashing issues)
It helps great with my hobbies. I use the camera everyday and I use iMovie to edit them. Works great as a tool for school.
 
After trying several tablets I decided to get a second-hand iPad 4 (32GB + 4G).
Why the iPad? The experience. Browsing web pages is, in my opinion, outstanding. Regarding multimedia I have no problems with iTunes as I use third part apps for movies, so I'm able to play AVI, MKV and so on with no issues. I don't use it for music.
Why not the Air? I simply couldn't justify the purchase. I know, it's lighter, thinner, but for my usage I see no big differences and I am happy with the fourth generation.
 
My aunt got one when they first came out, she got it on a business trip to New York as she wanted something lighter for editting docs and writing long emails, she hated BBs and didn't want to lug her laptop everywhere, so got herself a iPad 32GB, I then tried it when she got back and liked it a lot, it made me realize how useful tablets can be, eventually got my own iPad in 2012, the Retina screened iPad 4, and don't regret it at all, had it over a year and it's still looks new and runs beautifully.

Today I discovered that I may be able to do two of my assignments (the writing portion) with my iPad 4 using QuickOffice, I'll then add pics and graphs with my laptop closer to when I finish, but the iPad just feels so much more comfortable to type on, I'm so used to on-screen keyboards now, the tactile ones feel odd, lol.
 
At first I didn't want it. I asked what the point of an ipad was. it has been like this until my dad asked me what i wanted in his credit rewards program. he had enough points for me to order an ipad 2.

it was either an ipad or a nice coffee maker (addicted to coffee) but chose ipad 2 instead. the day i got it i didn't go to sleep until 5am. staying up all night @ app store and just playing with it and playing a 'town builder' game.

i realized that i can take this thing to bed after realizing i needed to sleep at 5. so i stayed up another hr to watch stuff on youtube and trying to find a website that'll let me watch the simpsons or family guy.

hooked overnight. i started to take it to classes and taking notes for it and exploring education apps especially PDF apps, then more apps and more and more...

can't live without it now. i recently made a choice to buy the ipad air 32 when i could have bought a 50" LED TV. its that essential to me. like a multipurpose tool. need to start saving up money for that TV though.
 
I've wanted a tablet for reading comics and A4/letter-sized PDF way before the iPad was released. Granted, I purposely passed on the original iPad since my experience with first generation Apple devices is they get obsolete more quickly compared to latter iterations. I would have passed on the iPad 2 as well (I wanted retina) if Viz Manga hadn't been running a limited time sale exclusive to the iPad.

I already knew I wanted a tablet. Apple just happened to be the first to deliver one with a good form factor and weight, decent battery life, reasonable pricing and apps for what I need the tablet to do.
 
For me, it was bid proposals. Lots of them.

A small but really annoying part of my job involves sending out RFPs for purchasing big ticket items that can cost a lot of money (petabyte storage systems, lots of servers, large amounts of fiber and networking gear). You send out a document to all these companies telling them what you want, and they come back to you with a proposal and a bid. Then you sit in a room with a bunch of other people working on the same project and figure out which of the proposals you want to go ahead with.

Sadly, this process relies on paper, and lots of it. You send out RFPs and get back these gigantic binders that are heavy and full of paper, and weigh a ton. It's often so heavy that I once had a stack of these for a project on the passenger seat of my car, and the car started beeping to warn me that the "passenger" didn't have their seat belt on. That heavy.

One day, I got fed up. I had skipped the original iPad because I already had an iPhone and didn't see the pint. But then the iPad 2 had come out, and I was looking at its specs. It can do PDFs and is super light and easy to carry. And we have a bulk scanner, which can take all those thousands of pages of paper, scan and OCR them so they're searchable, and make PDFs out of them.

So, a couple days later, all my co-workers were lugging in their stacks of binders, and scowling at me as I laid down my light little iPad 2 and easily flipped through documents and searched for pricing and other figures. At that point, I fell in love with it. Since then, a lot of my co-workers have bought iPads too, and we try to stress to vendors that if they send us a proposal, we'd really like it if it was sent in PDF or some other tablet-friendly format, and some are glad to comply.

I still use my MacBook air for lots of things, but anytime I want to just do e-mail, or look up some info, or just mess around on the couch at home, it's the iPad I go to. when I want to read something, all I buy are eBooks now, pretty much. The iPad 2 is long gone, but I have an iPad Air now, and my significant other is happily using the iPad 3 Retina I had before upgrading again.
 
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After my sister had her first-gen kindle fire (big piece of crap) I had wanted one! Last year during spring break I bought a black 16GB mini, and have since then dropped it, cracked it (in math class), and spent $220 with Apple to replace it. But my iPad now is awesome now that it's not all broken.


I really wanted one for the portability. At the time I was using a late 2006 MBP and it was horrible to carry around in my binder to school, and the battery life sucked. The iPad has awesome battery, travels well, and I can do many things with it. Just a mega iPhone!
 
Had a Nexus 10 because it's spec were technically better than the ipad 4s, and I was sick of seeing these all these kids with apple products. Looking back, I was a bit like a hipster, tried to get something better/different, and I convinced myself that I was smarter than all of those ipad-buying-apple-sheep.

6 months and 6 nexus 10 replacements later, due to an inherent memory leak that plagued literally every nexus 10, causing the device to shut down consistently after a few hours of use due to the memory leak eating up all the ram, I finally got a refund for the device.

This time, I got an xperia tablet z, since I was still convinced the other companies did tablets better than "apple and their locked down OS".

This thing was great, but had a large clump of dead pixels that annoyed me to no end. Browsing with JavaScript also gave way to a memory leak in the web browser, meaning if I didn't want chrome to take up 400mb of ram, I'd have to restart the browser periodically. This happened with every browser.

Eventually got mad, sold the tablet since sony customer support was worthless, and gave in to getting an ipad.
Sure, I got it replaced 3 times for dead pixels, but I've had this ipad 4 for nearing half a year, and it's fast, smooth, stable, no memory leaks, and I'm very happy.

One last thing, this ipad blows the nexus 10 out of the water in performance. Nexus 10 had double the ram, "better" processor, but everything, from gaming to browsing, is faster and gets better benchmarks on the ipad.

I still hate apple sheep, but my experience has really made me like this company more.
 
I have a cMBP but for school all my lectures are posted online in PDF format. Ipad is great when I'm in bed or on the go and I want to review notes. Small size and battery life are huge pluses.
 
4:3 format that's all. I avoid 16:10 and hate 16:9 format. For web browsing 4:3 still rules.
 
i wanted one so that i could browse the internet, do email, take notes, read, etc, without staring at tiny text on my iPhone 4 all day, or sitting with my MacBook Pro 13" on my lap. i also was interested in all the cool music apps, which are hard to use on an iPhone, and some of which are not even available on iPhone.

Then i tried an iPad Air at my local Apple Store. The hardware was pretty much perfect... but the OS is garbage. So i don't think i want an iPad any more. No, i'm not going to get some Android crap, either.
 
iPad 1

I got the first generation iPad, I loved it but it felt heavy and clunky for me. I skipped iPad 2 but knew I had to have iPad 3 for its retina display. I'm now using a first gen iPad mini and with 7.1, I don't think the hardware is on its last legs.

The iPad helped me through my college years and I'm sure it'll help me now that I'm about to find a job.
 
I'll admit when the iPad was first announced... I thought... it was an overblown iPod Touch with fewer features than the current iPhone (at that time).

How wrong I was.

I did buy one, but it wasn't an essential purchase, and I took a lot of convincing to do so.

I was convinced the minute I started using it, it replaced my daily newspaper, magazine subscriptions, books, changed the way I watched movies, the way I listened to music, much easier than doing all this on a laptop.

At the moment we have an iPad 3, iPad Mini Retina and and iPad 2 - not bad for an overblown iPod Touch! :)
 
Long time iOS fan, I didn't actually get an iPad until this year. I used Kindles for reading and iPhone for iOS, and was super happy with my Kindles.

Until I borrowed someone's iPad, and read a few books on it.

I bought a 32GB Air and I love it!
 
iMacFarlane said:
Long time iOS fan, I didn't actually get an iPad until this year. I used Kindles for reading and iPhone for iOS, and was super happy with my Kindles.

Until I borrowed someone's iPad, and read a few books on it.

I bought a 32GB Air and I love it!
Click to expand...

My dad went from a a Kindle to an iPad 4 a year or so ago to and couldn't be happier, I'm surprised as I thought Kindles had better displays for long periods of reading, do you find the iPad just as good in terms of that?
 
Tsepz said:
My dad went from a a Kindle to an iPad 4 a year or so ago to and couldn't be happier, I'm surprised as I thought Kindles had better displays for long periods of reading, do you find the iPad just as good in terms of that?
Click to expand...

My eyesight has gotten pretty bad over the last 5 years or so. Not so much on the ability to focus, but everything is dimmer. Even with the Kindle Paperwhite, the contrast between the white and the text isn't enough for me to read comfortably.

The iPad's bright, super clear display gives me the brightness I need, to the point where I choose the Sepia setting, and that is so much more soothing to my eyes than the Kindles dark, muddy almost white display. Long reads with no strain.

images
 
I had no desire for an ipad, I was perfectly happy with my Asus android tablet. Then my wife decided she wanted an ipad after using her sisters. I ended up buying her a 32GB ipad mini for her birthday.

Of course I had to try it! That was a mistake! I really liked using it, but I could not justify spending the money. Of course my wife had no problem spending the money and surprised me with a new in box 128GB ipad4 wifi/cellular she picked up on a groupon deal.
 
I'd had a few Android tablets (galaxy tab 2, Nexus 7) but wasn't completely satisfied. Decided to get an ipad mini as I wanted the smaller form factor . I'd used iPhones for a few years so was expecting good things.

I use my ipad mini everyday. It fits in my handbag, has great battery life so doesn't constantly need charging.
 
I've never owned an iPad yet, when the iPad Air is updated, I'll buy that.

I like the concept of a large iOS device. I fly a lot, and it's restraining watching movies on my iPhone 5. Plus I like to play around with image editing programs, which again is constraining on my iPhone.

I also look at it as a suitable laptop replacsment, as I have a desktop when I'm home.

Integration. I have a Mac, as well as airplay throughout my place. Love the remote app, and icloud integration between all my apple stuff. The iPad will be a great addition.
 
why i got my ipad

when the first ipad was announced it was kind of a let down for me. i could do all the stuff on my laptop. after finally getting an iphone, it really showed me the mobile aspect of devices. portability to do email and read docs and books on the go appealed to me. i've had several pdas before but it wasn't quite as intuitive as ios. I finally broke down in my senior year in college when my macbook pro crashed. I had three weeks before the semester was over and still had to finish my finals and papers. I debated long and hard about just buying a cheap windows laptop to get me through. But ultimately couldn't see myself using it after college. The ipad would do so much more. i used pages on the ipad with a bluetooth keyboard and was able to complete all my papers.
 
Well, I've never owned an Apple device except a 2005 iPod, which at its time was truly revolutionary. I am criticizing Apple for it's marketing techniques, its overpriced products and the huge restrictions it applies at her products. As a technology enthusiast and a guy studying Computer Science that's unacceptable.
Having that said, I chose the iPad Air because it met the expectations I had from a Tablet. I want my phone to be fully functional and able to do any task at any given time since I carry it all day with me. That's the reason I prefer an Android phone over an iPhone. But when it comes to tablet, they are being used for certain tasks, such as: reading books, browsing the web, reading newspapers, networking, or playing games.
The iPad is the best and most reliable choice at the tablet market at this moment. Not only it provides anything at anyone would ever ask from a tablet but it has a screen that is pleasant to the eye and hinder eye fatigue. And all this comes to a normal price level.

PS: The first day I was pissed off because I had to convert every tv episode and every movie I had to watch. Thank God I found an app that plays all formats and I bought it. Now the only thing that gets on my nerves is that I cannot password protect applications without jailbreaking it. I would like to let my parents use it without having them "accidently" opening my facebook app, or my emails. It's really sad that a solution like that doesn't exist.
 
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