“Nothing lasts forever and leaders are always toppled, but there is one exception to this rule, and that’s Apple’s iPad,” Vlad Savov reports for The Verge. “The iPad grabbed the title of best tablet device when it launched in 2010, and it’s held onto it ever since. This past year has seen an exhibition of iPad clones emerging, culminating in Samsung’s perfect pair of Galaxy Tab S2 copycats: they’re the same size as Apple’s iPads, use a similar metal frame, and even have the same 4:3 aspect ratio. This isn’t competition. It’s capitulation.”
“Recall, if you will, how many unanswered questions there were around tablets when the iPad was introduced. Filling the gap between laptops and phones meant making a choice between a desktop or a mobile operating system. HP and Microsoft opted for the supposedly more capable desktop choice, Apple went for upscaling its iPhone OS. The iPad won that battle,” Savov reports. “Then there was the question of size, with some prototype tablets stretching all the way to 15 inches (acting as essentially keyboard-less laptops), but Apple set the standard at just under 10 inches. And finally, most under-appreciated of all, perhaps, is the issue of the aspect ratio: Apple chose the squarer 4:3 format while almost everyone else went for the widescreen 16:9 or 16:10, which would better match the dimensions of a movie. Well, now we can conclusively say that the iPad’s won that battle as well.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple leads. The rest follow at a great distance. As usual.
Apple has done extensive user testing on touch interfaces over many years and we really understand this stuff. — Steve Jobs, October 18, 2010
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Daniel N.” for the heads up.]
Can’t wait for iPad mini 4💥😃
My problem is I love them all. Whichever I’m holding at the moment is my favorite.
I was under the impression that Apple was going to stop making the iPad Mini because there wasn’t enough demand for it.
It’s a shame the way Wall Street views products that last consumers a long time. Their quick throwaway mentality needs to be corrected. They think all products cycles should be short and that’s just plain stupid. I suppose they must hate to deal with appliance businesses selling refrigerators and stoves. I remember a couple of high-end Sony TVs I had that lasted well over fifteen years. That must have put a kink In Sony’s upgrade sales.
The iPad is a consumption device, a time sink. It befits a class of users who are relatively unproductive and have plenty of spare time on their hands. Nothing wrong with devices like that, but it does bring into question the long-term viability of products intended for sale to that group of people…
No way.
Jose, 2010 called and they want their argument back.
The truth sometimes hurts. I’ve used the iPad since June 2010 and at first it seemed like the ideal netbook replacement. Over the years I have tried several times to incorporate iPads into my two engineering/design businesses, but it just doesn’t make the cut. Great for surfing and goofing off, work?, not so much.
Jose, the big benefit for work is the Nurse, Doctor, warehouse guy who is mostly checking off boxes and putting in a bit of text.
For those uses it is immensely efficient.
José is the looser here
😉
So, Jose, just because you couldn’t make the iPad work in YOUR particular business, that makes it useless as a productivity device for ALL other fields? Really?
I’d like to see you tell all those Pilots, Physicians, Retailers, Salespeople, Real Estate Agents, Teachers, Graphic Artists, Photographers, Musicians, etc. what “unproductive” goof-offs they are to their faces.
Though Jose has a point that in many business environments (say office worker types) the iPad is a bad fit for productivity due to the way iOS works (till now. iOS9 may change this) as a single task at a time platform. This a a great fit for the types of users you list above so turning the argument around, because it works for the types in your list doesn’t mean it is a productive device for “ALL other fields”. Don’t need to take Jose’s opinions as fact. Just accept the iPad was not a good fit for his business’s purposes.
While reading Jose’s woefully ignorant post, got an email from a client having problems with her email. Changed her password for her and watched her log in. Got phone call and this guy deleted an entire client folder on OS X Server. Recovered it for him from their Time Machine backup. All including phone call from my “consumption device” while sitting on the toilet.
That’s some slick Schitt 😉
Thanks for sharing that lifestyle vignette! Folks say you pick your nose and eat it too.
It’s a perfect collaboration tool for engineers. It does Webex great. You’re not thinking about it correctly. I’d much rather attend online engineering meetings and reviews from my deck rather than at a desk or in some conference room.
iBooks on the iPad is an amazing engineering tool for storing, categorizing and organizing downloaded PDF specs and data sheets. iBooks on the Mac stinks though.
The iPad doesn’t make the person waste time. The user of iPads that do would be wasting the same time if they didn’t have an iPad. They’d be doing it on some other device. I do engineering work with mine, research on the web, read magazine articles, etc. your generalization doesn’t hold water.
iPad Mini Pro Air!!!
9 inch screen.
Apple makes iPads, not tablets. Apple’s competitors make tablets that try to copy the iPad. 🖖😀⌚️
It’s stupid the way Wall Street and the news media confuse product usability with upgrade cycles. To assume a long-lasting product that isn’t constantly being bought with a product that isn’t being used is ridiculous. That’s like saying no one uses mattresses any more because they’re not replacing them often enough.
And yet this same Wall Street invests in Serta, Sealy, Tempur-Pedic, and so on. I think your generalization of Wall Street is missing something.
There really is no better product than iPad for myself. Working on the road with multi hundreds of locations to visit. The iPad is invaluable for mapping out contact locations in 1 place. It is the MOST productive atlas I have ever owned. I also am able to easily enter and find information I need when discussing business with my customers. I suppose it befits a user like myself for many tasks. The iPad air 2 is also light as a feather so consuming movies, music, books, audio, internet and more are also nice additional benefits.
For writing, I use nothing but my iPad (with a bluetooth keyboard). I also rely on Apple’s Pages app as my primary word processor. I recently authored a comparison review between Pages and Word for the iPad if anyone is interested.
http://pattisonblog.com/2015/07/20/microsoft-word-vs-apples-pages/