Suggestion for a new tablet?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I’ve used https://1dollarscan.com/ with a few textbooks (before the age of widespread ePub or PDF versions)… it worked well, but it was pretty heartbreaking because they had to cut the spine off the book in order to scan and OCR it, destroying the book in the process :frowning:

I wish books would go to the way MP3s did (they’re mostly sold DRM-free now, I think). People who want to pirate them can still do so relatively easily, and the DRM just makes it a pain in the ass for the rest of us. DRM only punishes honest buyers.

Ironically, in the modern you-shall-own-nothing economy, music subscriptions like Spotify make cross-device use a complete non-issue. My library is on all my devices, with offline copies good for up to something like a month at a time. My partner can join my “jam” and mix her songs into my playlist — great for long roadtrips. The lyrics are time-synced, casting to TVs and smart speakers is simple… yes, it’s a new form of lock-in (and you don’t even own a copy anymore), but the conveniences are so nice I don’t think I’ll ever buy another CD again. Or rather, I still do, in order to support small indie artists, but then I’d just never open that CD and find the same album on Spotify instead. The usability is much better than the old Napster days.

42

Ah, I’m talking about authenticating WITH iTunes. If you aren’t using it regularly (I wasn’t) then it would lock you out of your purchased music and the app/program itself everytime I started to use it again. So I’d have to go to iforgot, unlock the device, type my password 2-3 times until it refreshed or updated the status, and then it worked fine. Until the next time I wanted to rip a new CD a month later.

Same thing to use the iPhone(s) I used to have, about once or twice a week, it would want to reauthenticate because I didn’t want to use 2-Factor. Same sort of semi-short but extremely tedious process. At first, I was wondering if there was a lot of efforts to hack my log-in, and I tried several new highly secure ones, but still, the constant verification and nagging pushed me away.

And yeah, I’ve also lost a LOT of free or purchased content from my very early days, when they weren’t careful on licensing, or never expected people to keep their promos for as long as I did.

But back to the OP, that’s a risk you run no matter the hardware and app provider.

@Roderick_Femm - the SD card is for additional storage above and beyond the 128G internal storage. So on lower memory models (or if you’re a big storage user especially with video) you can store all that stuff on one or more removeable cards. With your use, I don’t think you’ll need one. And I… mistrust them. All the ones I’ve used have failed within a year, requiring a reformatting, which then got me ever decreasing periods of use.

I get it - I have a NAS running my Plex server, and got a lifetime sub years ago, so, yeah, any internet connected device can access my entire library. It’s neat - but I also store a LOT of my music locally just in case…

43

I hope you like it!

More than once, the Dope has talked me down from some ultra-luxury thing I absolutely didn’t need. Sometimes the middle of the road is just fine :slight_smile:

44

I hope you enjoy it for many trouble -free years.

45

Come on, that’s just patently false. You can integrate an iPad (or any similarly spec’d tablet) into just about any work field. GE uses them on their factory floors to monitor the machinery, the oil and gas industry uses them for their digital field workers, about 80% of airlines use iPads for their electronic flight bags, and apparently even the Ukrainian Air Force has installed iPads in the cockpits of their Soviet-era fight jets in order to integrate Western weapons systems. The days of “it’s just a consumption device” are long over.

46

The microSD card is just storage. Great thing is if you ever decide you need more storage you can buy one and plug it in. But yeah, if you have no current need then skip it. You may never need one but nice to know you could get one if you have to.

47

With significant effort and lock-in, yes. They are not like most tablets in that and you cannot easily access their file system or sideload apps, which isn’t the case on Android (for a few more months…) or Surface. It’s more similar to Fire tablets in that regard.

You’re also limited by Apple’s app store policies and can’t freely run your own apps on it, and to this day there are restrictions on what apps can appear on the store (like no games streaming apps, for example).

If they were as open as a true computer — even a Mac — I’d love to have one. The hardware on them is excellent, but iOS is really really limited for anyone who’s used to a real computer or even Android.

48

It’s a significant effort to make any professional internal app for your business, whether it’s for iOS, Android, or Windows or whatever. And if your business has made an internal app for iOS, what’s stopping you from making the same app for Android? Where’s the lock-in? There is none.

I think you sort of made a disconnect here – you very quickly turned this into commentary on Apple’s App Store policies in general. That doesn’t have much to do with my previous response to you.

That’s what the built-in Files app is for.

In a business context, that’s what the Developer Enterprise Program is for. GE isn’t putting their proprietary software up on the App Store.

49

Everything @zbuzz has said is true.

But is irrelevant to the use cases of an ordinary end-user, not a corporation preparing to deploy internally-produced software to one or another flavor of tablet.

The other ecosystems have many rich layers of easily installable canned software between “It’s just a TV” and “I’m writing code from scratch in some dialect of C for my own device”. The iPad is relatively poverty-stricken in that regard.

Which, IMO is the set of points @Reply was making.

50

why, what’s happening in a few months? I suppose this is obvious or has been covered but I’m not getting it.

ETA: my new tablet is almost here… :grinning_face:

51

Re: the iPad stuff, I’m going to hide this in an accordion because it’s really quite a tangent at this point, and if we want to keep going for much longer, maybe it’s better as a linked thread?

iPad openness side convo

Yeah, basically what LSLGuy said… they are still primarily sold as consumption devices. This is not a technical limitation, but a policy on Apple’s own part. (And I say that as someone who thinks Apple Silicon is the best thing ever, and love my Mac.)

Yes, true, fair enough.

Also fair. I don’t know much about that program, so maybe it relaxes some of the restrictions?

However, from the consumer/small biz/indie dev side of things, iOS is significantly more restrictive in several ways, e.g.:

  • Consumers cannot sideload your apps or use alternative app stores (outside the EU, at least)
  • You have to have a paid Apple dev account to make apps at all
  • Xcode only runs on Macs, and iOS development without Xcode is more difficult (maybe even impossible? not sure there)
  • Somehow Apple walked away from the Epic suit relatively unscathed even though the Google Play Store was forced to open up; all IAPs therefore have to be subjected to the Apple 30% tax
  • iOS still doesn’t fully support PWAs as far as I know (progressive web apps) — like for notifications and such. Not sure if they’ve finally caught up. This would’ve been an avenue to much simpler cross-platform development, which is probably why Apple didn’t want to fully support it. They’d prefer App Store distribution over the Web.
  • iOS outside of the EU is still limited to Webkit; all browsers are basically still Safari under the hood, and subject to its limitations. Firefox and Chrome are basically reskinned Safari.
  • The file system, even the file manager you mentioned, is not really a “true” file system in the sense that you can shell in and access and edit the files the way you can on Android, macOS, Windows, and of course Linux. It’s a virtualized driver interface that presents file-look objects to the user, but to other machines it’s a difficult protocol to work with.
  • iOS still lacks the dev friendliness of something like ADB (Android Debug Bridge)

Contrast that to macOS, which doesn’t have most of these problems, and it’s hard not to see iOS as much more closed and primarily consumption-focused. Contrast that stock Android and the differences are still pretty big… and a rooted Android can do much, much more.

It only affects you if you want to be able to sideload apps from other app stores… and maybe not even then, depending on how the situation turns out. But if you only ever get apps from the Play and/or Samsung stores, this won’t matter to you.

A few months ago, Google decided that they will soon start more carefully vetting Android app developers, even for apps distributed outside the Play Store (sideloaded or via third-party app stores). This caused a big uproar: Google's plan to restrict sideloading on Android has a potential escape hatch for users - Android Authority

It doesn’t directly forbid sideloading per se, but it does make it more onerous for devs (especially smaller indie ones) to do Android development, and it makes distribution of unvetted Android apps more difficult vs its previously wide-open nature.

But after widespread backlash, they are walking back some of the restrictions: Google Keeps Android Sideloading for Power Users in 2026 << Android :: Gadget Hacks and Google is easing up on Android's new sideloading restrictions

So it’s kinda an evolving, wait-and-see situation. And again, it only matters for sideloading and Android app development/distribution outside the Play store.

52

I’m going to pull this out, as I do think discussion of ipad vs android is relevant to this thread.

I have to disagree. Any look at Apple’s marketing shows they really want people to buy the ipad for “next-level productivity”. They want you to get a keyboard for writing ($300), and a pencil ($130) for various types of graphical design work.

That doesn’t necessarily reflect how people are actually using ipads, but $2000 into a 13" iPad Pro is a steep price for watching Netflix on the toilet (though it is excellent at that).

I have an Android phone and an ipad tablet. I had Android tablets before, but took a risk on a heavily discounted ipad several years ago, and have been very happy with the switch. At the time, Android tablets were very second class android devices, but iOS (later iPadOS) are meant to run on large landscape screens.

It’s been long enough that I don’t have specific examples, and hopefully Android has gotten better at tablet support, so it might not matter.

All of the criticisms of the closed Apple ecosystems are valid, and I completely understand if that is a deal breaker.

My most resent experience with Android tables are Samsung Tab A 7 or 8 inch from a few years ago. They did well playing videos, but the processor was so slow that it is painful to just navigate around the OS, let alone do anything like web browse. Fortunately I just needed them to play a video on a continuous loop, so they fit my use case perfectly. Since that project is over, I can’t even give them away after someone interacts with them.

Just that horrible experience where you tap something, nothing happens, tap something else, and then suddenly two things happen. They were half the price of the cheapest ipad.

Hopefully the newer Tab A models are at least fast enough to be usable.

53

Since the original purpose of the thread has been satisfied, I as the OP have no problem with continuing that discussion, even though I have no personal interest in it.

54

Well, I hope you and @Roderick_Femm make comfortable use of your new tablets, with minimal WTF?! moments. I figure you should be good for at least 4 years of worry free use based on your needs and that model.

Aside to @Roderick_Femm again. I think that’s a brilliant idea, I know sometimes I look on a piece of tech I have and wonder how much I paid, or when I got it. It really informs you on how much you want to spend to replace, and how good the product was for your needs.

55

Weird, I’m using a Tab A7 right now and it’s perfectly fine for web browsing and relatively responsive in the OS. If the battery wasn’t tapping out quicker these days, I’d expect to get another year or two out of it at least. Using Opera and Firefox as my browsers.

56

A tip for all of you who are using mobile Android devices: if the device lags or gets unresponsive, do a complete new start, not just switching the screen off, but pressing the on/off button for some seconds until a screen appears with the option “new start”. That can work wonders. It should be done from time to time.

57

That’s a very good point. I only ever just let it go to sleep. I could kick myself – I might have been perfectly happy with the old one for quite a while longer.

58

That isn’t an option on my phone (Pixel 10), but there is a “Restart” in the power menu (power+volume up) that maybe does the same thing? It’ll probably vary between Samsungs, Pixels, Fires, and other Androids.

On the stock Android, you can also scroll to the very left of the open apps screen and “Clear all” to close all the unused apps. Android has some built in caching and freezing of background apps, but it doesn’t always work perfectly. Manually closing all the apps might help, and is quicker than a full restart…

59

Yeah, I’m sure that’s the same, only that a Pixel does it differently than most other devices. And after a few weeks or even months without a restart, it is much more effective than just clearing the apps and/or the cache.

ETA: I don’t know if this also applies to Apple devices because I don’t have much experience there, but from 12+ years of experience with Amazon Kindle readers, regular restarts also solve a lot of problems with lagging or unresponsiveness.

60

Well, I did it, there was a slight improvement but it’s still very slow with ordinary functions, like typing. So I don’t have to regret getting a new one, because it is an actual improvement.