I was seriously interested in the air 3 but ended up getting the pro. Love it. The air 3 though is the perfect size and I'm sure it will be great.
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Who would buy an iPad Air 3?
- Thread starter gadget123
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I already have the Air 2. I'm thinking about getting the Pro 2, whenever that'll be released
iPad sales are declining for what 3 years now? It doesn't matter though, they need to keep refreshing the lineup. Someone with an iPad 2 might be looking to upgrade and you don't want them going somewhere else.
I'll upgrade to an Air 3 only if there is pencil support. Otherwise the Air 2 has been wonderful and will serve me just fine.
I will probably retire my iPad 2 to my son's band for scrolling lyrics, etc. and get the Air 3.
I have an Air 2 now, and I'll get the Air 3 only if there is a bump in screen resolution. I'm not happy with the sharpness of Air 2, especially compared to my 6S Plus.
If rumors about it getting a 401ppi is true, then I'll get one for sure. Hopefully they will use the same technology from iPhones to get a better contrast ratio as well.
If rumors about it getting a 401ppi is true, then I'll get one for sure. Hopefully they will use the same technology from iPhones to get a better contrast ratio as well.
will upgrade for pencil only.
Pencil seems logical to add for me - sell more accessories = more $. Encourage way more people to upgrade from the Air 2 (which otherwise appears to be a bit of a classic model like the ipad 2 - it'll have very long legs). And lastly it'll vastly grow the userbase of pencil-enabled ipads, which helps encourage their developer base to write apps that properly support pencil (which in turn is a good thing for ipad pro too)
They'll keep the ipad pro having the higher resolution screen, larger screen, and more ram (possibly faster CPU) as differentiators. They don't need the pencil to do that job.
If they improve the speakers to remove that horrible screen vibration, that is a bonus but not something I'd upgrade for. I basically use mine just for browsing and watching videos, but I do use split view quite often for messenger use while browsing.
Pencil seems logical to add for me - sell more accessories = more $. Encourage way more people to upgrade from the Air 2 (which otherwise appears to be a bit of a classic model like the ipad 2 - it'll have very long legs). And lastly it'll vastly grow the userbase of pencil-enabled ipads, which helps encourage their developer base to write apps that properly support pencil (which in turn is a good thing for ipad pro too)
They'll keep the ipad pro having the higher resolution screen, larger screen, and more ram (possibly faster CPU) as differentiators. They don't need the pencil to do that job.
If they improve the speakers to remove that horrible screen vibration, that is a bonus but not something I'd upgrade for. I basically use mine just for browsing and watching videos, but I do use split view quite often for messenger use while browsing.
My plan is to trade-in my 64gb cellular iPad Air 2 to take the price down on a Air 3 wifi
I expect great things from the air 3! However, I'm waiting for iOS 10 to see if it's even worth updating from my air 2.
Do any of you believe there is a chance Apple will bump up the base storage capacity of the iPad Air 3?
I would think a 32gb base model would be common in 2016 but I guess not.
I would think a 32gb base model would be common in 2016 but I guess not.
16GB has been the base model in iPhones since the iPhone 3GS came out in 2009. And here we are 7 years later with 16GB still being the base model. There's no telling when Apple will finally include more storage in the base model.
A 32GB base model should have been common 3 years ago. It's a damn tablet. ("Wow, your base model iPad has the same amount of storage as my base model iPhone!?") However, Apple knows how to make money. Personally, 16GB isn't enough for me, so I'm forced to spend $100 more to get the next model up. If they made 32GB the base model, I would definitely not have to spend $100 extra.
Lets say 100,000 people are in the same boat as me. That's $10,000,000 that Apple would either make, or lose out on. The most sickening part to me is that 32GB of memory only costs Apple around $6.00. They get a discount because of the quantity they buy.
I think this is the year they have to bump storage, with the Air 2 they dropped the 32GB option and lowered the price of the 64GB and 128GB models.
32GB, 128GB, 256GB.
The iPad Pro launched with 32GB and 128GB, I believe this is the first iOS device to have 32GB as the base level of storage, possibly an indication of the future?! I also envisage they'll add a higher tier in March to 256GB.
It is almost an open secret Apple wants people to upgrade the storage at purchase (16GB base?!), yet they also now need to start growing that services portion in their accounts, the only way they can do that is by increasing device storage, they can't just rely on streaming only.
I highly doubt that the Air 3 will have greater base storage and it all stems around a single thing. Cost.
Apple sells millions of devices with 16gb storage and they will continue to do so as they market their devices to a broad spectrum of users, many of which have very miniscule storage needs.
It's a cost savings to keep 16gb base storage and to allow users to upgrade instead of actively investing additional money into every iPad to provide more storage. It's almost certain a large percentage of the users have no need for it.
The ones who require more storage will undoubtedly pay the additional costs but Apple doesn't want to pay the additional few dollars per device to increase the base storage when they have plenty of current users who are getting by just fine with 16gb.
If you look at the number of iPads sold and factor in just a few additional dollars per iPad, you start to realize the amount of money needed to simply increase base storage to 32gb.
We are in a different league now in terms of performance, at that point iPads Geekbenched 700, now they bench at 2500. I'd take the 4K screen although would be annoyed at it having more pixels than the iPad Pro!
I still think 4K would be too much for A9X, it would be a laggy mess with no real benefits. No 4K please.
I agree to some extent. Throwing 4k on to an iPad is no real achievement and will not help any core issue. Apps that use the hardware properly (it is time to move on from the iPad 2 era), higher storage options, longer battery, solid accessories (Pencil is great, keyboard could be backlit), some more advanced iOS functions, i.e managing Apple Watch 2's, homekit etc. Then at that point if iPads are doing all of the above then driving a 4k display would take headroom that the device would need.
Classic Apple though. Launch new size/form factor with manageable resolution, then do a res bump on an established form factor, then roll that back into iPad pro later on.
How much faster is the Pro vs Air 2 in on-screen benchmarks?
It could be a situation where the Air 3 actually has lower on-screen performance than the Air 2. Though not to the same extent as the iPad 2 to 3 debacle.
I think the 4k would normalise any additional power the A9X in the Pro offers. As such in you would end up with the Air 3 having the same real world performance as the Air 2 but with the benefit of 4k. Although that is purely my opinion and I've not looked at any numbers whatsoever to justify it.
Both Air 2 and Pro versus the Air.
iPad Air 2
A8X second-generation chip with 64-bit architecture
Compared to A7:
CPU: 1.4x faster
Graphics: 2.5x faster
iPad Pro
A9X third-generation chip with 64-bit architecture
Compared to A7:
CPU: 2.5x faster
Graphics: 5x faster
Perfect selling point. 4k iPad Air 3, then an updated 5k iPad Pro.
An iPad Pro with a single USB-C port, 256GB storage, iOS 10 with a filesystem app and 5k, is probably the perfect device.