Yesterday my sister told me she had given her laptop to her grandson and to replace it she ordered an Apple Ipad. She asked my opinion and I don’t have one. I don’t even know what an Apple Ipad is. What is its intended use? Is it a suitable product to replace a laptop?
Any input will be welcome. Thanks.
Well, that depends on what she was using her laptop for to begin with. For some purposes, an iPad is just as good as a laptop or better, and for other purposes, it’s terrible.
It’s a tablet computer, similar operating system to an iphone or other touchscreen smart phones. It’s basically a screen that you hold, no keyboard (when you need to type there’s an onscreen touch keyboard).
If her main uses are web searching, email, viewing photos, simple games, that kind of basic user stuff, then an Ipad should replace a computer just fine. If she does serious work on it (spreadsheets, writing very long documents etc), then it might be more difficult. Also, they have less storage capacity than a computer, so if she has a large amount of files she likes to save on the computer she might need to look into ways to supplement the Ipad’s capacity
I’ve had one for a few years. I have used computers for years, and it took some time tomget used to it. You need to realize that’s it’s for consumption, not production.
Are there ways to supplement the Ipad’s capacity? You can’t add memory or external storage devices, can you?
Anyhow, there are various models of the ipad, going up to the ipad 5. Higher numbers are more recent, have better processors, and are more expensive. Older models (Ipad 1 and 2) may run into problems, many games and other software requires more recent versions. There’s also an ipad mini.
The next factor is the memory size. I think most or all of the ipad models go from 16gb up to 64gb. The more memory, the more games/music/software the pad can hold.
Finally, internet access. It comes in 2 flavors: Basic ipad: You have to use wi-fi (wireless internet) to access an existing internet connection (yours or someone elses. Flavor 2: Internet ipad. Has its own internet connection and works basically like a phone. You subscribe to a service (I don’t know many details about plans/cost), and you can access the internet anywhere at any time. Internet ipads can also connect to wi-fi or home routers (to save minutes I guess). Not all models have internet service, but all of them have wi-fi. The ones with internet access are more expensive plus you have to pay for the internet service.
What can you use ipads for? Programs (called apps) of all types, lifestyle, medical, food, finances, etc. Tons of games, most of which are a few bucks or even free. You can download music, movies, television shows, and books from itunes onto your ipad and play them whenever you want. There’s a camera, and a ton of goofy image manipulation apps that allow you to do fun or weird things to your pics. You can also add your own movies or music to the ipad.
Is it better than a laptop? As other said, depends on what you’re using it for and your personal preferences. ipads tend to be much more restrictive about what you can install on them than laptops are, have less processing power and memory, and cost more than a laptop. You probably won’t be able to do work from home or school on an ipad. On the other hand, everything the ipad does, it does really well. They’re very smooth and easy to use machines, a lot of fun to play with, and great all-around devices.
It’s not useful for spreadsheets or serious word processing, but since getting my iPad, my laptop has been pretty neglected. 95% of my daily activity is as good or better on an iPad.
I’d recommend getting a Bluetooth keyboard for it.
Go to a store and try one out. Any Apple store has a bunch of them available to try. Many other stores that sell them will have demo models too.
I think the “it’s for consumption not production” angle is oversimplified. I’ve written tens of thousands of words of notes and emails on an ipad. It’s not a 1:1 replacement for a laptop, but its size and immediacy can make it a good tool for certain jobs.
I was thinking along the lines of cloud servers or internet-based storage, but you may be right…that’s a drawback to having just an I pad. I have a laptop, too, and store a bunch of stuff there and sync it on and off with the iPad. But really the ipad is enough for most things, I just have a large music and movie library.
The key point about all tablets and other “computer replacements.”
If you’re just a consumer, use whatever spins yer wheels. If you do ANY kind of production, you need a real computer with a complete input interface.
Okay, I’ll be the first to ask: How do you not know what an iPad is? Let me rephrase. Are you saying that you have never heard of it, or that you simply don’t know what its purpose is?
I don’t mean to be provocative at all. I am genuinely curious. The iPad is probably as ubiquitous as any mass-produced and marketed consumer device has ever been in the US. I’d imagine you’d have to have no access to radio, TV, the internet, and newspapers to never have heard of it.
Lol. I was just going to post the same thing.
To say the iPad (and by extension, other tablets) is for consumption only and not at all for production simply isn’t true.
Some examples: the Gorillaz and Bjork have both released albums produced (at least partially) on an iPad. David Hockney has drawn multiple covers for The New Yorker on his iPad and iPhone. Tim Cook said during a recent quarterly financial results conference call that 95% of Fortune 500 companies use iPads- did those iPads get deployed just so employees could tweet their Angry Birds high scores and download fart apps?
My iPad serves mostly as a web browser and email platform, and also as the quickly grabbed alternative to my iPhone when I need to type something longer.
It is logically equivalent to an iPhone except for, literally, the mode of talking on the phone. In practice, the onscreen keypad is pretty easy to use with touch typing hand motions (though you have to watch hand position as the “keys” are strictly visual and can’t be felt). And, the screen size is like a small laptop, not a phone.
I prefer a desktop or a laptop for producing lots of text or programming, but the iPad can still do it. Depending on how much typing you want to do versus how much lugging stuff around you want to do, it’s absolutely a plausible compromise.
iPads are klunkier for getting files into and out of, but if you’re using a spreadsheet, a word processor, or a presentation package (think PowerPoint or Keynote), Apple has just integrated its base level office bundle through iCloud and all the iPhone, iPad, and desktop products. I mean, within the last few weeks. This makes iPads even more capable as a laptop/desktop replacement, especially on a part time basis.
That tablets (i-brand or other) CAN be used for some of these creative/production purposes does not mean they are well-suited to any of those uses, and I could probably find the posting size limit here by listing all the things they cannot do, or at least do well enough to bother.
Creative freehand artwork is perhaps the one area where tablets are as good as any other electronic tool, and have the advantage of simplicity and portability. It’s all downhill from there in terms of capability and efficiency. I suspect the music crowd that uses them is doing so far more for the kewl factor than because they’re in any way an improvement over, say, a laptop. “Partially” producing an album on a iPad is right up there with saying an album was “partially” produced on an old Dell laptop used to control MIDI settings and a digital mixer.
Tablets have their place. They’re great. My wife has an iPad; I have a Note II; we’re likely to get the kids a matched set of Android tabs this Christmas. But they are 99% for consumption and effectively 0% for “production” of anything but email input and light editing of existing documents. The corporate world is taking them on because they replace a briefcase full of documents and can access millions of pages that are constantly updated - not because they are productivity tools in any sense but info-retrieval.
It’s a big iPhone, except it’s not designed to make calls. If you think you could replace your laptop with your iPhone if only it had a bigger screen, then go for it. If not, then don’t.
“I can run my whole life on a ______!” - this week’s fill-in being “tablet.” I’ve watched a hundred tool/app fads come and go. Not enough of them have gone.
F’rinst, I just encountered a client that has been doing flyers, instruction sheets and even correspondence for ten years… in Excel.
And politely declined to accept a client who has been doing flyers, posters, signs and instruction sheets… in PowerPoint.
At least I haven’t encountered anyone doing art in Word for quite some time. Or anyone who thinks you can cook a turkey in a microwave.
Notes and emails, sure. Simple text. At work I write and edit documentation including proposals, policies, procedures, technical documents. It would take 5 times longer on an iPad, if it’s even possible. I use Excel for pricing, analysis, and all kinds of complex tasks. Microsoft Office is not available on the iOS platforms and the substitutes for are not nearly powerful enough for this type of work. And if you use macros, you can completely, utterly forget it.
They are extremely useful if you are highly mobile. Great for sitting in a meeting referring to something somebody else wrote, or a PowerPoint presentation. I use one to record scorecards for youth baseball–it’s just amazing to input simple info about plays and get a comprehensive set of statistics automatically. I use one with an app that replaces four huge Real Books for playing jazz–it doesn’t just show you the sheet music, it will play it for you, too. It’s such a wonderful tool for the right thing.
Tim Cook made that remark during an earnings call last year. The quote was, “94 percent of the Fortune 500 is testing or deploying iPad…” Well, of course the CEO of Apple is going to tell you during an earnings call about their market penetration. What a spin. I do not know the source of his number or the raw data, but “testing or deploying” does not mean “all their employees are using them for everything.” Like I said, great tool for mobility. But engineers and financial analysts are not sitting at their desks doing all their work on iPads.
It’s bad enough that too many of them have gone to/been forced to do it on laptops.
If you sit at a desk all day, an ergonomic console takes precedence over any ability to move to another desk easily.
I know nothing of Apple products, but that gave me pause. That type of memory refers to flash memory storage, which is the equivalent of hard drive storage ( and very small it is compared to desktop storage ); the memory ( DDR2 ) sizes on an ipad appear to range from a massive quarter of a gigabyte to an astounding whole gigabyte.
Less is more in Appleland.
If it’s enough processing memory to do what it needs to do, what difference does the number make? Not every OS has its performance tied to working memory size as strongly as Windows. I believe iOS is a very efficient small-scale OS and larger working RAM would do little to improve its performance.