Isn’t that kind of the point of the responses though? Tablets (like smartphones, laptops and desktops before them) have left the status symbol space and are becoming commodities.
Apple is trying to differentiate themselves partly by creeping into the laptop space (and laptop manufacturers are creeping into the tablet space).
I guess it’s just a case of familiarity breeds contempt. Hybrid cars aren’t anything exciting or noteworthy any longer either, just another vehicle option.
This is also why Apple goes balls out to hype their new phones – Slightly better screen! Slightly better battery! – because they need to make it look “new” to generate any interest. Just owning a smartphone in of itself is rote these days, much like owning a tablet is no big deal.
Yep, basically, this is it.
Though, the iPhone X has gotten the buzz. I don’t quite get it, but I guess people want something to get excited about. That’s understandable. I haven’t seen any of that excitement for tablets in a long time. They are full-on commodities at this point.
A few years ago, I bought my college-age daughters iPads for Xmas. 2 years later, I bought them iPhone 6s and the result was that they abandoned their iPads.
So this year, I’m buying their used iPads, and giving them to my (75 year +) parents because my parents are not computer literate enough to have a tower anymore. They’ve gone through 3 Windows towers in the last decade, because they do not recognize or understand how to install essential updates, such as Java or Windows. The only one they DID successfully install was the flashing malware one, which subsequently destroyed their hard drive. So now they don’t trust anything, and frankly, I’m exhausted trying to walk them through the process. It’s really not user friendly to download a file and then fetch it and execute it from the download folder. And when they don’t install the updates, eventually the computer just doesn’t function anymore.
Anyway, it’s my hope that iPads will offer them a more pleasant and stable experience. I plan print out very clear instructions on how to download updates to their iPads, in the hopes that they can finally be free of the Windows nightmare. There are just a few things that they want to be able to do, such as read email, play games, and look at Facebook, and there’s no need to have a tower to do this anymore.
If only they could connect the iPad to the tower keyboard and monitor for the times that my dad wants to play his poker games on a big screen…
In any event, I think the tablets are still a great solution for non-tech savvy people.
I recently got a Lenovo 2-in-1 device with detachable keyboard, 10.1" screen, Atom x5, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, small enough to use as a tablet, powerful enough to use as a laptop (obviously not for picture/movie editing). It goes away with me on holiday and laptop #1 stays at home, when at home it plugs into the TV via micro HDMI slot for playing movies from an HDD or streaming. I’ve left my tablet so long the battery’s dead, but I use laptop #2 with the keyboard attached 99% of the time as I hate fingerprints. The only time I unattach it is when watching movies on the go.
I have a Samsung tablet that I love for guitar practicing. I prop it up on the edge of wherever to show music sheets to play to. It’s easy to rapidly switch to YouTube lessons, websites, etc and back to the music sheets. It has far less footprint than a laptop (e.g. on the edge of a beer keg in someone’s basement).
It also gets frequent use as music/movie/media player on airplane flights (I rip DVDs as needed to a memory card)
More precisely:
Phablets to Overtake Regular Smartphone Shipments by 2019, with Phablets Expected to Hit 1 Billion Units by 2021, According to IDC
Minor bump just to comment on my further awe at the ubiquity of tablets.
In my line of work, it’s very common for vendors that you use regularly to give out gifts during the holiday season. Usually it’s candy or some trinket. This year, one of the vendors is giving out Amazon Fire 7s.
We live in interesting times.
It’s probably not the solution you’re hoping for, but you can get an HDMI adapter for the iPad and thus hook it up to a monitor or TV for screen mirroring. And get a bluetooth keyboard.
I have a Galaxy Tab S3 and I like it quite a lot. I bought it for the beautiful AMOLED display which may be the best on any tablet and the pen implementation which IMO is better than that on the iPad Pro. In general I also prefer the Android way of doing things: widgets, notifications etc. I enjoy the experience of writing my thoughts on a tablet. I use an app called Squid where you can use your fingers as an eraser and it feels very natural. Samsung has integrated some nice menu options with the pen button which also work well.
The prices on some of these are absurd. The Amazon Fire 7" and friends have knocked the market out from under el cheapo brands like Azpen and even higher end stuff is feeling the heat.
E.g., I just saw a national chain selling Samsung Galaxy Tab E Lite 7s for $50. True, it runs Android 4.4, etc. but it is a Samsung and came out at the beginning of this year. How can the no names compete with this?
Amazon takes on loss on the 7"s, hoping to make it up on people buying content from them. How can Samsung make money on this tablet?
I just got an iPad for Christmas (after asking for a moderately-priced tablet like a Fire). I have a flip phone in the car for emergencies only. I have a laptop at work and a desktop at home for MS Office and related. I asked for the tablet for completely non-work things like games, ebooks, etc. It will be fun to have while waiting for appts, for movies to start, etc. I’m already subscribed to Netflix, hulu, amanzon prime video, etc., so it’s good to go.
I will echo that bigger phones basically have made tablets obsolete. I have an iPad (Air 2) that I bought partially for the 10in size and partially as a way to ‘play’ with iOS for not a lot of money (it was on sale). I’m an Android/Windows guy. The iPad was nice, but I barely use it. Sometimes I’ll use it to cast something to my TV or look at Facebook if I want to save some battery on my phone (Galaxy S8+, which has a 6.2in screen), but that’s few and far between.
I do have a Surface Pro (4). But I use it in laptop mode the vast majority of the time. Every once in a blue moon I’ll need to take notes while standing (for which I can use the tablet/Surface pen) or for reading comics. Aside from that, it’s in keyboard connected mode.
FWIW, I only know one person in my friend group that uses tablets all that often. And that person uses some cheap Amazon Fire thing and doesn’t have a large smartphone. Though she recently did get a cheap smartphone, so I wonder if she uses the tablet anymore.
I have an iPad. I used to scoff at them but they’re so much more convenient to carry round and use than my laptop, and battery life and screen size are pluses over my phone, alongside my iPad working on my wifi in every room in the house while my other two devices are much pickier. If my toddler pinches it from my hands I’m less worried about her breaking it, too.
Tablets are quite popular in the civil service.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Tablets may be obsolete for certain individuals, but not for everyone. I have a laptop, a cheaper LG smartphone, and a Galaxy tablet. I LOVE my tablet and use it several times a day for reading, games, Twitter, Facebook, etc. The phone I use as mostly a phone and the laptop for more text-intensive things like reading/writing here, and writing papers. Of all of them, the tablet’s my favorite.
I believe the iPad is to general computing as the iPod was to MP3 players: a radical transformation that made things accessible to the masses.
The thing about the iPad is that it was a lot more durable and future proof than Apple expected. My children still use the iPad2 they got in 2011 on a daily basis.
My mother has a pair of iPads – she uses it on the sofa and constantly while on vacation. She bought a new one because it’s her go-to camera. She has a cell phone as well, but generally finds the screen on her phone too small to be comfortable.
Doctors and other people who walk around a lot or can’t be tied to one location also tend to carry tablets: they fit well in purses/large pockets, and are more readable/have longer battery life than a phone.
I think tablets really are the third device for a lot of people… but once in the home they become the favourite second screen unless people really spend a lot of time typing.
Thinkpad at work, students use Chromebooks.
Laptop for everyday Internet use (it was the device I used to earn my M. Ed.)
Got a smart phone for school. The alarm clock and calendar are what keeps me on schedule and employed.
Kindle Fire is my e-reader. The local public library is sad, so if I want a new book, 95% of the time it has to be an e-book. It’s also acceptable to use to surf the net when insomnia strikes so I don’t have to get out of bed or disturb Mr. CK.
I know little about tablets, and I have spent much of my adult life avoiding Apple products. The Kindle has two drawbacks. The touchscreen keyboard is not user friendly, and without wifi it is just a book.
I don’t have any statistics or citable sources, but I do travel all over the US and the world and work in the corporate environment to the power plant environment. Gradually I’ve noticed increasing numbers of people using tablets with keyboards instead of laptops, despite the fact stated earlier that new laptops are incredibly light (the new Macbooks are actually lighter than last year’s iPads).
While tablet use seems to be less overall, the iPad seems to have a much greater share of the market than ever. Just as the iPhone is pretty much the default phone for the upper level of the corporate folks I work with, iPad Pros are everywhere. We even have a whole team of developers at my company working full-time converting many of our applications to IOS, optimized for the iPad.
I thought this was a zombie thread on first glance.
Yes there’s no fanfare about pads these days but they can hardly be called “obsolete” when so many millions are bought every year. I’m struggling to think of any of my friends and family that don’t have a pad.
Yes theyre not as fast as a computer and not as small as a phone, but that still puts them in the sweet spot for a lot of applications, and since they are cheap as chips for most people it makes sense to own one.
My laptop is not just heavier, but also implies I take other accessories like an adapter, a mouse etc which in turn normally means I will take a separate case just for the laptop. For things like traveling it’s often much more convenient to just throw my lightweight pad into the same bag as my other stuff.
I’m still waiting for the day that my tablet can talk to my flip phone. That phone is (was) smaller than carrying my smart phone. I haven’t checked the latest tethering capabilities of flip phones. I am not near WiFi enough to carry the tablet around but I’d like to use it over my phone.