HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
To know what every non-fanboi thinks of the iPad just take a look to your right.
Even in the article the guy couldn't keep his sarcasm in check (only THREE times more processing???)
Neglected is the right term.
See icon --->
Apple has tinkered with its iPad line, resurrecting the Air and administering a bit of mouth-to-mouth to the Mini as the company battles tottering sales. The iPad unit has not been its usual superstar self of late – the popularity of Apple's fondleslabs has declined as unit sales dropped last year, although revenues perked up …
The best the Android world has, ARM's A76 in the SD855 etc. is roughly comparable to the A10, which Apple introduced 2 1/2 years ago. If Apple has only increased their CPU power 3x in the past four years, it is because they were already so far ahead of everyone else in the ARM ecosystem that it is harder to keep multiplying the speed.
Though I doubt Android SoCs have gained more than 3x during that time, either.
When I go visit my elderly parents their landline phone rings almost every hour with nothing but scam calls spoofing their local area code.
They know better than to answer any unrecognized numbers.
Most recently they have been bombarded by phone calls that show "APPLECARE" on caller ID.
I called the number from a burner phone I have and it is very convincing.
There is an automated service which prompts the victim to speak the make of their Apple device and serial number or IMEI depending upon the device.
Users have been reporting this scam phone number for over a year with victims claiming agents with thick Indian accents remote access into their devices.
https://reportscam.com/800-275-2273
sigh,
At least it makes a change from the incessant calls from BT 'we are disconnecting your service' and Microsoft 'your computer is compromised'
Naturally these are not genuine calls from Apple, BT or Microsoft but these poor Indians with English names working from their former garment factory sweatshops in places like Mumbai, Bengalru or Chennai have to earn a crust somehow don't they?
Well no they don't.
The moment I hear an Indian voice on the other end of the phone I say "What are you trying to sell me?"
Almost always, they hangup right away.
It really is time for BT to stop all this scamming but it won't be easy...
Interestingly, I just had a call pretending to be from my bank describing fraud on my account. It was a reasonably good one, but crucially (and rather worryingly I thought) it was a British woman, possibly north eastern England accent. When they first asked me to confirm something (the current balance I was happy wasn’t affected by fraud) and I gently said “no, I don’t share my info with unverified cold callers”, she hung up.
Depressingly, although they say otherwise, the same bank do actually ask you to verify parts of your security details when they genuinely call, so really aren’t helping themselves. They always seem baffled when I ask why they’re not verifying their identity with me, as they called me. Authentication works two ways.
@AC "Authentication works two ways."
I've been bashing my head against that brick wall for years so I'm glad it's not just me. When a Bank or some such calls me they always want to verify my identity even though they've called me. I understand you need to make sure you're speaking to the right person but I need some way to check you are who you say you are before we get on to who I am.
I've had some more pragmatic responses when I've pointed out I have no means to verify their identity and usually get a name/reference so I can call back on the main number to make sure the call was genuine but I've also had plenty that think I've started speaking in Swahili when I point out I'm not giving personal information to an unverified caller who just calls up and asks for it.
It's really quite simple: just never ever answer a phone call from a number that you don't recognise (even better, don't even bother to plug a phone into your landline).
In the unlikely event that a call might turn out to be from someone that you you might want to hear from, they will find another way to contact you. I refuse to use call centres (phone queues and non-asynchronous communication are so old-fashioned, that's why humanity invented writing) and only ever communicate with my banks, etc, via secure messaging.
Most recently they have been bombarded by phone calls that show "APPLECARE" on caller ID.
Until STIR &/or SHAKEN is implemented, don't bother reporting the number to any relevant government body because the numbers are spoof. Do Not Call List won't make any difference if the scammers are from overseas.
These are some of the reasons why fed up people are doing something no government can do: Fight back. And one method of fighting back is Lenny.
I've had Lenny installed for a number of years now and the calls have dropped. I am lucky if I actually get a scam call a month.
Why should you have to buy a case just to be able to use the thing?
You don't need one. I've had iPads since 2012, never used a case and the thing just works like it should. Amazing!
If I was going to use it somewhere that posed a risk I might choose to protect it. But I like it like it is.
I'm borrowing an I-Pad 2 from a mate to test stuff and I find it incredibly slippery, really just waiting to fall on the floor. My old Samsung Galaxy 8.9 had a rubberised back from the get-go. Really surprised given the US culture of strict liability (knives must carry a warning that they're sharp, coffee cups that they may contain hot liquids, etc.) that no one has taken Apple on for this.
Dave 126,
No! That's not acceptable! The modern phone/tablet design ethos of "we're going to make it ergonomically shit and force you to spend extra on a case" is really pissing me off. People who put glass backs on phones that make them hard to hold and more expensive to repair when they inevitably slide out of someone's hand should be beaten with sticks, until they learn better.
People have different requirements from a phone or tablet case, so allowing the end user to choose which case to use is just sane and sensible. And as a side benefit Mr Blogs doesnt accidently pick up Mrs Blogs phone as he leaves the house, since he's gone for rubber and she prefers leather.
A very American viewpoint.
Hear any American touting anything as increasing "freedom of choice" and you know two things:
a) you are going to have to become an expert in whatever it is to exercise that choice
2) it is going to end up costing more than it should before you can "enjoy" whatever it is.
A case costs very little, and offers a lot of advantages. The major advantage is that you can choose between them, for aesthetic, functional, or protection purposes. You need no special knowledge to choose one. If you want one and don't want to search, you can go to a shop and look at the shelf of case options, think for a minute, and pick one. The tablet works fine without a case, and isn't going to shatter immediately (although it's a tablet, so it's by no means well-constructed).
Meanwhile, there are reasons not to implement everyone's desired feature into the device itself. I don't want a rubberized phone. In my experience, it doesn't add much protection and does add a lot of pointless volume. It helps the device stay put and not slip, but I have a metal device that already doesn't slip very much. Meanwhile, I do want a case that will protect the device from damage should I accidentally drop it, so I bought one of those. Whatever additional feature you want, you can get the case that does that. There is a difference between making the device resilient enough not to break (every manufacturer should do that) and implementing a feature desired by a small subset of users and forcing it on everybody (no thank you).
Google last week killed the chromebook
They told people in their hardware group to look for other jobs within the company recently; but that's not the same as killing the entire Chromebook product category.
And compatibility.
I subscribe to a legal music video download service which provides videos in mp4 format. They play on multiple PCs with various software, phones, tablets, in fact everything except ..... the ipad.
Itunes won't even transfer the files at all.
Their genius says I have to install a 3rd party player then transfer the files within that to get them to play.
Ermmmmm No. £409 refund please.
I guess Apple don't want people playing movies that haven't been bought from their store in their specific codec then.
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1) Price
Profit is how you motivate qualified engineers to stick with something until it's truly ready release.
Engineers working in your best interest don't work for free, that would be communism.
2) Locked eco system.
ITYM Secure eco system?
You will still spend days reading stories of really bad things happening to Google-Play users/victims right here on theRegister. Time and time again, we have demonstrated that a very tall walled garden is the only way. Third party libraries have not been your friend.
3) Lack of popular connectors/interfaces.
I've never broken a lightning connector since the iPhone 6. But, i work for a consumer product company that spends an enormous amount of money designing mini-USB connectors that don't break when you vigorously jam the plug in wrong-side-up.
+1 on the problems with USB-C and mini-USB. My daughter “borrowed” my rather expensive power bank and tried very hard to recharge it by plugging a micro-USB cable into the USB-C charging socket. It seems that the socket cannot be replaced so I now have a somewhat unusual paperweight.
1. Totally agree.
2. Sure, but that's not a surprise.
3. And the alternative is? I don't know of any tablet with interfaces (yes, you can get a cable to connect a small subset of USB devices to an android tablet, but the IOS devices have one of those too and almost nobody uses either). What interfaces are there that Apple lacks and a comparable small tablet has? This isn't being compared to a laptop.
Locked eco system. I don't want to use Apple Cloud or app to transfer,my content
???
You don't have to use iCloud to transfer content. Or at all, really.
DropBox, OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, etc. all work with iOS. There are also OTG-type drives for the Lightning port. You do have to use a companion app to access them, which is admittedly less convenient than mounting the volume directly as Android does. But the point is that there are numerous third-party hardware and software methods to transfer content to and from iOS devices.
I’m constantly amazed by people who think St Steve (as they like to call him) think it would have been good business practice to announce that Apple would make a phone or a stylus years before they made one. Have you heard of the Osborne computer? Osbornisation!
Probably why the article referenced it... Even included a hyperlink that detailed the joke.
“The move means that pretty much every iPad now has a stylus option – an event that, thankfully, Saint Jobs is not alive to see.”
Plus, as Jobs said - if you *need* a stylus, you’ve failed. You really don’t need one to operate an iPad.
Businesses need to evolve, adapt to their markets and innovate to stay relevant and afloat.
Imagine where Ford would be if they still only made Model T's which their founder was proud to state you could have in any colour as long as it was black.
So every time Ford brings out a new model does everyone hark back to Henry Ford's view of the world and complain because its not a black Model T ?
Wrong comparison - Ford T rationale was to create one the cheapest car for a mass production - so any "personalization" was then an issue, and the car color didn't change its functionalities anyway. iPads aren't exactly the T model of tablets... more akin to Bugatti (a design icon...), maybe?
It looks more like modern cars removing the spare tire because you shouldn't need it... and if you need one, it was because you were driving it wrong...
You don't need a stylus in order to operate an iPad, unlike touch screen devices running Windows CE and Windows ME back in the day, however if you want to draw pictures on your iPad, then a stylus might give you better results than your fingers, but you can use your fingers if that is the style you are looking for.
Neither did you need a stylus to operate the XP tablet edition rig from HP (work machine) that was on the table beside me when I first read that Steve and jony had invented something completely new called an,"iPad." We used the stylus for signature capture, nobody used it for anything else. I used the keyboard because I'm the kind of person that still has a blackberry, but most people in my firm used it like a thick iPad with Windows on.
Jobs' anti-stylus stance was his usual facile reality-denial."it's new and innovative! Doesn't even have a stylus, *completely* different from anything that's gone before. If you have a stylus you're braindead. You wanna be braindead? No you need iPad. Innovative."
"If you need a stylus, you've already failed," - St Jobs himself
or alternatively
"If you see a stylus, they blew it." - also St Jobs...
And somewhere in-between came his observation that mini tablets are,"braindead," I think was his particular nebulous disparagement.
I love a bit of snark as much as the next man but how many times does the Reg need to pretend that saying "if you a need a stylus to operate a tablet they've blown it" has anything to do with the availability of an optional precision instrument for people who wish to produce art? Newer, better jokes please Reg-people. This one was mildly funny the first time, less so the next few but now... well, just a bit sad. You can do better than this.
If so, Apple would have added it much earlier as an optional accessory, given its historical market - but they didn't until "others" shown a tablet with an "optional precision instrument" is a good idea...
So, yes, now that Apple extended the support to the whole range - and all we know how difficult is for Apple to admit it was wrong - it was necessary to repeat the old joke.
With Microsoft's Surface Go handily undercutting Apple's iPad Pro line [..] and the continuing march of Google's Chromebook, Apple's new iPads have their work cut out
That statement makes no sense. The iPad Pro line is in a completely different class than the low-end Surface Go or Chromebooks. They are not competitors...unless you count the handful of $1000-1500 Chromebooks out there (and why would you?)
Apple already has an education-targeted 9.7 inch iPad that was refreshed last fall. It starts at $329, and I've seen them as low as $249 on Black Friday type sales. It supports (but does not require) the less-expensive version of the Pencil, which is admittedly less desirable than the new one but the price delta could make a difference for a school that's buying a lot of them. All iPads (regular, Air, Mini, Pro) work just fine with numerous 3rd-party Bluetooth keyboards, not just Apple's branded one. Plus, there are literally tens of thousands of decent-quality and inexpensive cases and accessories for iThings.
I also don't understand the "cable revenue isn't going to make itself" snark about keeping the Lightning connector on the new models. First off, the Pencil version that these iPads use plugs into the Lightning port for charging, so it would be stupid to use a different port. Moreover, I'd be willing to bet that the new models will mostly be bought as upgrades by people or orgs that have older models -- and thus will already have lightning cables. And anyway, a cable comes in the box with the product.
It's fine to dislike Apple; they're not easy to like sometimes. But at least do your damn homework and write an honest critique.
So you've only ever bought the one lightning cable then? Famed for their durability!
And you've only bought the one Micro USB that came with an Android device?
Lighting cables are no less (or more) durable than Micro USB. They're about the same price (five-packs of them in assorted lengths are $10-15 on Amazon). I'm not clear on what your objection is here.
I don't understand why the reg is so anti Apple, it's shockingly poor journalism.
I buy Apple for the same reason as the chap above - it just works. The apps are highly regulated and checked, there's very little to adjust or play with, the eco system and auto backup is great and works perfectly and the devices are fast and stay running fast for their lifetime. What's not to like ?
Probably because they gave unbiased reports on their products in the past that did not toe Infinite Loop's party line that would force journo's to rabidly report on how great their stuff was, and in revenge were blacklisted in infinitium, so the gloves are off on both sides.
I'll just leave this here: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/07/reg_effort_to_attend_iphone_7_launch/
The end of the article seems to go off as Chromebooks are better.
The iPad and Chromebooks are designed for two totally different types of usage.
Many people don't understand this.
The iPad is designed as a content consumption device. Watch movies, play games, read ebooks. web browsing, etc.
Chromebooks are designed as cheap throw away laptops. If you want to do things that a laptop does, write code, term papers, then a chromebook would be better. I don't understand people trying to make iPads into laptops, this kinda of works with lots of hurdles. Then people go and slam on the hurdles trying to shoehorn the wrong device into the wrong task. Apple kinda follows along and tries to enable this to happen, but with their sandbox, this is never going to be the same as a laptop.
But they work great to consume media. Hand an iPad to a 3-year and watch them learn to navigate it in minutes.