“Apple did it again and surprised everyone with yet another stellar financial performance during the recent holiday quarter. More revenue, more iPhones, more Macs and Watches, and just a hair under as much profit as the record set a year ago,” Wil Gomez writes for Mac360. “Everything is coming up rose gold at Apple.”
“Except for the iPad. What Steve Jobs’ heralded as the device to usher in the post-PC era has fallen on hard times,” Gomez writes. “A year ago the iPad sold three times the number of Macs and had greater revenue. This year it barely doubled Mac sales and revenue was almost $2-billion less than the Mac. What’s wrong with the iPad?”
“iPad sales have dropped for about three years straight,” Gomez writes. “As of now, the iPad is not a compelling device to spur new sales. Upgrades come every couple of years, while iPhone gets the complete makeover every year… All iPads should come with Pencil, regardless of size. The idea here is to make iPad a compelling enough device to buy alongside an iPhone and a Mac. That’s what it was in 2010, that’s what it’s missing now.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote over a year ago in December 2015:
Imagine an “iOS Pro” mode.
Turn on iOS Pro on your iPad Pro
1. Tap Settings > General, and make sure iOS Pro is turned on.
2. There is no step two.Hey, we can dream, can’t we?
Shouldn’t such a thing already exist? Where would iPad sales be if it did?
Also, as we wrote last March:
When on the road, we want the ultimate in portability (hence why we’re still carrying 11-inch MBAs until the next-gen 12-inch MacBook arrives) — but we want the 4GB RAM packed into the bigger iPad Pro vs. the reported 2GB in the smaller iPad Pro. Screen redraws due to a lack of RAM have been the stumbling block for us really using iPad in the field since its inception. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro finally has enough RAM.
And, as we wrote last February:
Here’s the thing: The iPad saturated its addressable market so quickly and the iPads are so well made and last so damn long that unless Apple provides a really compelling reason to upgrade, most people are just not upgrading yet. We handed off our original iPads to relatives a couple years ago and they’re still being used! Yes, they lack sensors to support many modern iPad games, but they are still in use. We also have immediate family members still using perfectly working iPad 2, iPad 3, and older iPad Air and mini models. The obsolescence cycle for iPad rivals that of the Mac. It’s very long.
The iPad is not a niche product. It had unprecedented uptake and the devices have such long, useful lives that the replacement cycle still hasn’t really kicked in. When it does — and when the macroeconomy improves to the point where users can consider adding the joys of iPad to their computing lives — then we’ll see iPad unit sales growth again. In the meantime, Apple should redouble their efforts at improving iPad – adding Apple Pencil, Smart Connector, and multi-user support (to mention just three things) — that will make the iPad even more appealing to buyers.
What’s wrong with Apple’s iPad?
nothing, it’s the greatest consumer electronic ever created.
Because some product isn’t constantly being bought in huge quantities, there’s this stupid tendency to think there’s something wrong with it. These people are absolutely retarded. Where do these ridiculous assumptions come from? It’s like these people can’t put themselves in the situation. How much money should people spend on a new product if the one they’re using is in fine condition? Does it really make any sense to throw the older working product in a drawer just to have a newer version? No, not really. Thinking that something is wrong with the iPad is totally stupid. People tend to keep using a good product much longer if there’s NOTHING wrong with it. Why can’t these numbskulls understand that much?
It’s going to be very difficult for Apple to improve on a product that’s already outstanding apart from speed bumps or battery life and then that product is going to also last a long time for users. In this case, that’s where services is going to come into play for a large user base of iPads. It’s a perverse world where products built to last is frowned upon as a bad thing for consumers.
I have 4.
A Gen 2, a Gen 3, a mini and a Pro
All are in use every day. Still. (Whole family)
No need to upgrade the older one. Except perhaps because it’s stuck on iOS9
iPad 2 still in use here, they are built to last.
They are built to last a few years until they become slow / laggy and can’t run the latest iOS. They aren’t built to last that long from a software / performance POV.
That’s one problem. Apple didn’t build in planned obsolescence into the iPad design. It’s almost too robust a product.
To increase sales Apple needs to get the general public to salivate about the next upgrade, make them feel that they absolutely must have one or they’ll die. Tall order maybe. But the iPad’s got a lot of headroom for growth in capabilities that have yet to be tapped.
reduce the price of the Pro would be a good start.
No user accessible file system and no way to directly transfer files cross-platform without a subscription cloud service ==> NO SALE.
Dropbox is free. Then there is email…for macs there is Airdrop, iCloud, iMessage, etc. I do this all day and don’t pay for a subscription service other than iCloud. How do you transfer files from a Mac to windows???
USB thumb drive.
Lack of some kind of filesystem access is a real problem sometimes. It’s not like Apple can’t or won’t do it, either: you hook up an iPhone or iPad to a Windows box, it has access to the photo directories in the file explorer.
I use onedrive. It’s free (1TB) with Office365 which is cheap anyway and it works on my Macs, iPad and iPhone and I get another 1TB for free for my Win10 running on parallels on my MacPro.
It’s a bit clunky in some respects but it’s flexible where I iCloud is not.
My Apple world is increasingly polluted by non-Apple software. I swore I would never have anything Microsoft on my Mac but that’s impossible and, yeah, it’s horrible to use but after Apple dumbed down Pages I have to use Word and Numbers has always been pathetic. I hate Google as a company but I have Google translate on my iPhone and I just downloaded google maps because here, in Spain, Apple Maps is essentially unusable.
While not ideal..technically..you can do that with iTunes.. But..you can also do it with iCloud Drive. File transfer off network is always clumsy as most people don’t have a USB drive with them 24/7. Even with Mac to Mac transfers I tend to default to Airdrop now since it’s easier.
If iPhones had at least a partially open filesystem, it could *be* the USB drive for most files, and it’d be with us almost 24/7.
Airdrop is unfortunately still flaky; sometimes my Macs will see my iPhone, but not vice versa, even when the Mac is discoverable by everyone.
So you do pay for a subscription and you can’t do anything offline.
In the field, i rely on an old MacBook Pro for my work. iPad isn’t even a close second option. I would use Windows before iOS.
Our workplace has both Windows (predominantly now) and Mac users. Files are shared on our locally managed server and also small stuff via USB thumb drives. For some projects that require data from the field, big files are sometimes saved to external drives before uploading to our server archive, but the dongle hell is serious pain in the butt. Almost everyone uses wired ethernet connections as much as possible. Firewire, USB, etc are just too slow if you’re sitting in the office anyway.
Nobody uses iOS here. Tried it, it bombed. It’s a phone OS, nothing more.
Keep in mind that because of security and because of probably copyright agreements having an open file system is a big no-no. Having an open file system shell that you can navigate your productivity I agree with but having an open file system to the main system files and your music folder I kind of disagree with You
Only the most advanced of advanced users wants access to the entire filesystem. For “normal” advanced users, an open filesystem with a shared space that can be read and written to when connected via USB, and which all apps can then access without having to share a full copy between apps, is more than enough.
Any possible copyright agreements is a poor excuse when Android has no such restrictions. And if there are such agreements, it’s entirely Apple’s fault because Apple surely has the leverage to demand concessions from the studios based on Android’s lack of restrictions alone… if they wanted to.
5GB Free if you are just moving files.
Airdrop also transfers files cross-platform
Pretty sure “cross-platform” here means Windows is involved, not iOS Mac. And Windows doesn’t support Airdrop.
What’s wrong ? Its a bit expensive if you want a decent amount of storage, especially the 12.9″ model. Other than that its fine and dandy!
We all know the upgrade cycle isn’t going to be the same as a highly subsidized iPhone. I expect my iPad Air to last 5 years at least as a fully capable iPad (although its already slowing down), then it will last a few more years with limited functionality, like the iPad1 with iOS5 today but less “crippled” than that.
What’s wrong with the iPad? Let’s count the ways:
1) They last forever.
2) Software is not advancing fast enough to out-class the processing power of iPads even 4-5 years old.
3) They are expensive compared to garbage slates, which are acceptable when someone is just going to do email and web.
4) Iterations of the iPad don’t make people salivate for the newer version. (Use of an iPencil that begs to be lost and doesn’t much matter in most apps doesn’t count.)
5) The design is so simple that a garbageSlate is easily mistaken for an iPad.
6) People put iPads into humungous clunky cases — so smaller, lighter, an Apple logo, and Apple design basically don’t matter at all.
7) They’re not good enough as laptop replacements. (Apple should have begun selling attachable body-systems years ago, which are essentially the computing slab of a laptop. Allow the iPad to connect and enable the iPad computing system to talk with the body system and you’re golden. MDN has been banging this drum for years. FYI, they’re almost always right, and in this case are entirely right.)
8) iPads don’t break.
9) iPads dim and turn off too quickly.
10) iPad white-balance is annoying — it’s not better than paper. Long ago iPad (and iPhone) screens should have begun to register the ambient white balance and match it on screen. If I’m in daylight the screen should be more blue to look like paper lit by daylight. If I’m in a dark room lit by incandescent bulbs the screen should become more orange.
11) iPads aren’t that great for games. Using your thumbs gets old fast.
12) iPads around my house are almost always run down battery-wise. People use them and set them aside. So you go to use it and have not much time left. Teaches one to not look for the iPad.
Some of the above are very important, some are mere quibbles. But added together it’s enough to make a person not super-psyched about iPad, or at least not psyched about dropping another $700 for one.
Speed. There needs to be price reduction and four time the speed it is now.
iPad 1st gen.
Use it for email, notes, TomTom App, music, Podcasts, maps and a bunch of older games.
As to the battery being run down, plug it in to charge it. How lazy can you be?
Apple has sold over one billion iOS devices — mostly iPhones. They need to make the iPad into a laptop replacement to take advantage of the massive user base and software developers. And, I predict that Apple will introduce an iPad laptop this year.
Microsoft is at a huge disadvantage moving forward because they don’t make smartphones.
The Microsoft Surface Phone is expected to release in the first half of 2017.
This may be why Apple has been getting a little irritated with Qualcomm recently.
MDN totally correct, I have a series 3 iPad and yes it is somewhat sluggish now but is still a compelling device especially as its first OS update withing months of buying it initially brought in a degree of sluggishness that goes up and down now depending upon the upgrade so i have barely known it as that sleek instant experience a new one would surely bring. You don’t miss what you (practically) never had. Yes i want split screen but apart from that and speed I’m not sure that I have the real impetus to upgrade its a device that looks like it will go on forever and looks like it is new visually.
I will consider a replacement with the next upgrade but I do really want something compelling to make me do so. I am still a little aggravated by the fact there are certain times I would rather do something on my Mac than on my iPad even when the latter would be more convenient (or simply on) to do it at that time. Little things but there none the less and a simple thing like being able to move the cursor left or right when you miss select an insertion in text would solve much of my annoyance better auto correct (though that mat be a case of the lag adding errors), a better way of storing files or pics in what I have always called a file vault (ie only there when you need it and not a universal file system). iOS has for me improved a lot in the last 2 iterations but before that all it did was slow the iPad down and offered practically nothing i noticed at all so its been catch up of late. Its getting there in software but but is really does need something a bit more eye catching that you really want and the iPad Pro concept needs to move forward too to fill in the gaps that stop it being a true Mac replacement.
And that i think is the problem. Apple has held up development because it did not want to threaten Mac sales even as it slowed down Mac development (a true double whammy) and I still don’t think despite the late and forced adoption of iPad Pro concept Apple still hasn’t yet shown the direction it wants it to go or at least how far it will allow it to go. As I say the next update will show their hand a lot more I suspect one way or the other in a way that the hurried iPad Pro 1 doesn’t yet confirm.
The software needs to grow up. The promise of desktop class apps needs to be realized.
No one needs a new iPad to watch Netflix or brows the web, but to run full desktop class apps we need a more sophisticated iOS.
Now with pencil support there is no reason that a far more granular UI than even a desktop can offer could not exist on an iPad. With pencil support the iPad could tear through many tasks better than a laptop. Most of the creative tasks specifically.
Word processing and type input the laptop is the clear choice, but for everything else, a more sophisticated iPad os could blow the wheels off anything else.