“I’ve been carrying Apple’s new, cheaper 9.7-inch iPad around for the last couple of weeks, putting the $329 tablet through its paces,” David Pierce writes for Wired. “It was the only gadget with me on vacation, other than my phone, and proved more than adequate for everything I needed.”
“Apple likes to talk about the cheaper iPad as a device for schools and students, but I see it as Apple realizing most people don’t want a tablet that replaces their computer,” Pierce writes. “They want a gadget for reading books, playing games, watching movies, aimlessly milling the internet, FaceTime-ing with the family back home. Hardly anyone needs an iPad, strictly speaking. But it’s a wonderful thing to have. And at $329, down from $499, it’s a much more palatable purchase.”
“My favorite thing about iPads has always been the battery life. Apple quotes 10 hours for the new model, but it seems to last even longer,” Pierce writes. “For travel, you can’t do better. This tablet comes with a universal SIM, which means if you spring for the LTE model, you can quickly get service in almost any country.”
“It’s not a laptop replacement, it’s not for work, it’s not the future of anything,” Pierce writes. “It’s a $329 book-reading, movie-watching, game-playing, getting-away-from-it-all machine. That’s plenty.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: When we’re home and we just want to surf the web, read, watch video, or play a game, we always grab our iPads over our iPhones. Obviously, it’s the screen size that makes the difference; even Apple’s largest 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus in all of its prodigious glory cannot compete with the most basic iPad when it comes to just lounging around.
If you don’t have an iPad yet, there’s never been a better time to get one!
SEE ALSO:
The Daily Express reviews Apple’s new iPad: ‘World’s greatest tablet just got more affordable’ – April 22, 2017
Macworld reviews iPad (2017): With a stripped-down iPad for $329, you may not need to go pro – April 10, 2017
Ars Technica reviews Apple’s $329 iPad: ‘For people who have never upgraded’ – April 6, 2017
It’s just plain old iPad, and it’s cheap – starting at just $329! – April 3, 2017
Apple’s new iPad is actually more than ‘just’ an iPad Air – March 30, 2017
Apple unveils new 9.7-inch iPad starting at new low price of just $329 – March 21, 2017
whatever
Waiting for the day that Apple releases an iPad light…
And with iPad light I mean, just a big iPad screen that connects over Bluetooth to your iPhone…
Can you imagine how awesome this would be?
You can connect your iPad to your iPhone via Wifi right now. Just initiate a WiFi hotspot on your phone. My old iPad3 is WiFi-only, and that is how I have used it on the road for years.
I don’t believe that a “dumb terminal” version of an iPad will be that useful. First, it would not be all that different from a WiFi-only iPad in terms of size or weight. The electronics in the iPad are quite small…the chassis is mostly filled with batteries. Second, your phone would have to be active, meaning that you would be draining its battery, and battery life is the weak spot of all smartphones. It goes hand-in-hand with the smaller scale (square/cube effect).
I am not sure how much Apple could lower the price for a “dumb terminal” iPad, but I seriously doubt that it would be enough to entice me into purchasing one when I can buy a fully functional iPad with WiFi for $329.
Lounging around : my new wording
Nobody wants one.