sometimes it's just a CPU bump... get over it. it was already the best product on the market.
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All iPads Has Apple finally done it this year?
- Thread starter bobjonesco
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Apple should just scrap the regular/pro branding. Next year just have an iPhone 15. Less is more. For a period of time there was only one model iPhone to buy. And if you wanted a less expensive iPhone, you purchased last year's model.
Yes, people have many options, including looking at other tablet manufacturers if they want to see if Android works for them. Doesn't buying used still have a warranty if it's within the standard warranty period or still under Apple Care? And of course buying certified refurbished comes with its own warranty from Apple at the time of purchase. Both are very viable options if one can't afford a brand new Apple product.
Having "enjoyed years of buying the latest hardware" is a luxury that most people can't afford, so I have a hard time feeling sorry for someone who isn't able to do so now or doesn't feel it's worth it now. That's sort of like trying to feel pity for someone who's been driving a $200,000 car and now has to drive an $80,000 one 😂
Not sure why you call the high end market "silly"--remember, a market is made up of consumers, so you're really calling those consumers "silly". Why are they silly? Apple is going to go where the money is. They have a wide range of products in most categories, though, so I really don't see the issue. These are all very nice products.
But you are correct, if people en masse stop buying certain Apple products, things will change due to basic economic principles. But I really don't see that happening. It seems most people still find them worth the price.
Simple. IPads require higher watt chargers that fewer people are already likely to have on hand.Just to add to this thread.....
Whyyyyy do you get a charger (not that I am knocking this) with the £369 iPad, but not with a £1k+ iPhone.....?
What is the logic....
Yes, people have many options, including looking at other tablet manufacturers if they want to see if Android works for them. Doesn't buying used still have a warranty if it's within the standard warranty period or still under Apple Care? And of course buying certified refurbished comes with its own warranty from Apple at the time of purchase. Both are very viable options if one can't afford a brand new Apple product.
Having "enjoyed years of buying the latest hardware" is a luxury that most people can't afford, so I have a hard time feeling sorry for someone who isn't able to do so now or doesn't feel it's worth it now. That's sort of like trying to feel pity for someone who's been driving a $200,000 car and now has to drive an $80,000 one
Not sure why you call the high end market "silly"--remember, a market is made up of consumers, so you're really calling those consumers "silly". Why are they silly? Apple is going to go where the money is. They have a wide range of products in most categories, though, so I really don't see the issue. These are all very nice products.
But you are correct, if people en masse stop buying certain Apple products, things will change due to basic economic principles. But I really don't see that happening. It seems most people still find them worth the price.
Please don’t pity me, I wasn’t asking for that. I don’t buy the top of the line hardware anymore, but I did like buying the latest iPhones and iPads until this year. If they are too expensive, I don’t mind annoying people here with my complaints though. I say silly prices because they’ve all jumped up at least £100, even older devices have seen a significant increase in the last few weeks to what they were before. I didn’t mention anything about consumers being silly, not sure how you twisted it to that to be honest? Anyway, I think we’ll just go around in circles in this so let’s just never cross paths on here again, deal? All the best.
Uh, you said (emphasis mine):
Again, a market is composed of customers/consumers. You made a direct contrast there between "customers who want a a £700-£950 smartphone" and "the silly high end of the market" (meaning customers who want a more expensive phone). So, no "twisting" involved. I simply read what you wrote in plain English (and you still haven't explained why you called them silly, btw).
I'm not making any deal with you. I'll open any thread on this forum that I please and reply to anyone I please (and, btw, you were the one who initially engaged with me on this thread, not vice versa . . . just for the record). You can do the same or not. Feel free to add me to your ignore list if you'd like since you obviously have something personal against me. I have no ill feelings towards you. I'm sorry you can't handle disagreement without taking it personally.
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What about them? Pro updates were incremental, as most tech updates are. Base update was huge, actually.
In Europe, because of the weak Euro/Pound. Thank Russia and/or Brexit for this. Apple prices in the US are remarkably stable, actually, considering all that‘s happening in the world right now.
Examples?
Edit: and please don‘t just quote spec differences as that is how all manufacturers differentiate their product lines. Just examples where a lower-end Apple device is less user friendly by something Apple purposely „gimped“.
I agree that there is a lot of value in Apple's entry level products. You usually get about 90% of the user experience for less than half the cost of the high end.
For $2135 MSRP, you can get an iPad, iPhone, AirPods, Apple Watch, and MacBook, all new from apple. If you shop apple refurb (indistinguishable from new, IMO) or wait for sales, you can save hundreds more. (If you bought during that recent Amazon sale, you could’ve gotten all that for about $300 less, I think.) yes, you’d be getting some older designs and no cutting edge features. But every one of those devices would run its current OS and several more generations (at least) quickly and smoothly and would do everything most users need flawlessly.
So I just don’t buy that apple has become unaffordable. The crazy jacked up prices are for the people who want the cutting edge, but they’re totally unnecessary for most users. If you want to pay twice as much for a handful of “nice to have” comfort features, that’s on you. (I say this as the owner of an iPad Pro who would be just fine with a base model iPad)
And developers "gimp" features all the time to drive users to upgrade, so I'm not sure why people act like this is some travesty. It's a very common, effective business practice to whet the user's appetite.
What we're seeing in the MSM as inflation is actually monetary deflation, where currency is worth less at an increasing rate. In this environment it requires more units of currency to buy, well, anything. Look at the cost of petrol, groceries, rents... In this situation it makes perfect sense that you pay more for an iDevice. The device is not more expensive, your dollars/pounds/euros are just worth less.
The cheapest, workable Apple ecosystem, honestly, is buying 2nd hand of devices that are barely within OS support. So that would mean getting a 2015-2016 Macbook, iPad, iMac etc. The prices on those can be wonderfully affordable. We're talking less for a full ecosystem than the price of 1 modern device.
I think Apple has become unaffordable to a certain segment of their customers with new pricing structures but as you say, there are options and many if us this year snubbed the 2022 products in favour of last years devices to pay more sensible prices. My daughter saved all her money this year for a new iPad and my wife and I advised her to wait until the iPad 10 was released as we didn’t want her paying £379 for an iPad 9 that was very near to being replaced. However the iPad came a couple of days ago and it’s pretty mediocre by previous standards and now starts at an eye watering £499. My daughter was gutted, but we don’t want her paying extra for something that offered no benefits. She ended up opting for an iPad 9 and Apple Pencil in a deal that was less than the Apple Store are now charging for the iPad 9 on its own! Spending habits just have to change, otherwise prices will be creeping up each year until demand completely crashes.
I generally agree (the retina display made it into the MacBook Air, and the base M1 is an absolute screamer for performance. Apple does frequently add their best innovations across the entire lineup). But there are a few exceptions where I feel like Apple did artificially cap certain things. The multi-monitor support on the base 13" M1 MBP is one such example. With the M1 having 16 billion transistors (and a GPU many times more powerful than the Intel GPUs), there is no reason Apple could not have designed the M1 to physically support two display output streams like the much smaller Intel processors could. Instead, we have a situation where the 13" Intel could support this, but you have to upgrade to the 14" on the M1 lineup to do the same.
It's often certain features we take for granted that sometimes get omitted. I could get a 14" if I want to, but I genuinely love the size and the battery life of the 13" (I travel a lot, and the regular m1 is fast enough for me). It sort of puts me in an awkward situation as a user where I would have to upgrade to a laptop I like less just to do something fairly simple, so I end up using just one external monitor at my work desk instead. Definitely first world problems (it's an amazing machine, I definitely will not complain), it's just weird that the support was omitted.
I honestly think the main issue is that Apple doesn’t reduce prices over time as the tech ages, as many companies do. Raising the price of the new pro, however painful, makes sense with the economic situation. Raising the price for the 9 is what feels really wrong. Of course they can. Of course it costs more to make as prices fluctuate. But it should have been steadily reducing before, so that leaving it at a lower stable price would have been an option. I do understand why they’ve done it, but I think it’s a slap in the face to consumers and possibly a poor PR move.
That's one of the secret sauces for Apple
By maintaining "price points" over time (selling older and older stuff for the same original MSRP), they capture and milk all the benefits of the devices becoming cheaper to make over time.
I agree with you about the multi display support on M1. Can’t be justified. And, clearly there are some users who need more than base models (especially with Macs).
I’m just saying that, on the whole, there is pretty good value in Apple’s base models. It’s not a situation where the low end products are just to get you in the door, but are actually laggy, buggy crap that nobody would want to use. Apple’s low end products provide many years of software support and fast, stable user experiences that are remarkably similar to what you get with the high end models that cost 2-3x as much.
What is really strange about some of the products this year, and frankly in recent years, is that you have "new" products with older / less capable processors, screens, cameras, etc than the products that were released a couple of years ago, yet these products also have one or two random new features, and the prices are increased. The best time to buy an iPad was probably an iPad Pro last year, or one in 2018.
The current "iPad" combines a worse screen and an old processor with a new form factor that doesn't add much. The landscape camera is the coolest part of it, but I wouldn't buy an iPad just for that. Honestly for basic iPad use the 9th generation still works at a lower price.
The current iPad Airs are actually fine. Same with the mini.
The iPad Pro 2022 was a bit of a wasted upgrade, but at least the price didn't increase. But it offers basically nothing useful over the 2021 models.
The current "iPad" combines a worse screen and an old processor with a new form factor that doesn't add much. The landscape camera is the coolest part of it, but I wouldn't buy an iPad just for that. Honestly for basic iPad use the 9th generation still works at a lower price.
The current iPad Airs are actually fine. Same with the mini.
The iPad Pro 2022 was a bit of a wasted upgrade, but at least the price didn't increase. But it offers basically nothing useful over the 2021 models.
My limited and confusing view of Apple's iPad trajectory has convinced me this year that I need to distance myself from iPad shopping until I can see a clearing in the distance, but I will remain in the Apple ecosystem.
iPads have never been "essential" to me, so I learned to live with the less than ideal timing of my iPad purchases, i.e., getting my first iPad right before they went retina, or getting a 10.5" Pro right before the 2018 overhaul.
iPads have never been "essential" to me, so I learned to live with the less than ideal timing of my iPad purchases, i.e., getting my first iPad right before they went retina, or getting a 10.5" Pro right before the 2018 overhaul.
Thankfully i´m covered for some years in all fronts (iPhone 13 PM, iPad Air 5, Watch S7), because the current prices in Spain are just impossible to upgrade even with entry level offerings (iPad 10 is almost the same price i paid for the Air 5 some months ago on Amazon, and we are talking about a downgraded Air 4 here). I can make all of those devices last at least 5 years, or even more, as they solved my main issues with my former devices (weak 8 Plus battery, a bit laggy iPad 6 performance, and abysmal Watch S3 performance, vs stellar 13 Pro Max battery, stellar iPad Air 5 M1 performance, and enough speed in Watch S7 to guarantee functionality), i hope the situation is better at that moment.
I always keep an eye on the competition, which has some good products (Samsung and Google have interesting ecosystems, better update cycles than before, and useful functions like Dex, way better than Stage Manager. Also Surfaces are good products). But i still think Apple offers a better performance and interconnection between devices. Taking presentation photos on the iPhone + Airdrop them to iPad for adding them in Notability while i record and takes notes on conferences is a really key use in my workflow to simply toss it away easily. If you check the competition on this front, they make it less simple (worse note taking apps, inferior writing experience, more convoluted to send the pictures to the note taking app, and even inferior multitasking, as Slide Over is way more useful than it looks at first glance).
I always keep an eye on the competition, which has some good products (Samsung and Google have interesting ecosystems, better update cycles than before, and useful functions like Dex, way better than Stage Manager. Also Surfaces are good products). But i still think Apple offers a better performance and interconnection between devices. Taking presentation photos on the iPhone + Airdrop them to iPad for adding them in Notability while i record and takes notes on conferences is a really key use in my workflow to simply toss it away easily. If you check the competition on this front, they make it less simple (worse note taking apps, inferior writing experience, more convoluted to send the pictures to the note taking app, and even inferior multitasking, as Slide Over is way more useful than it looks at first glance).
Yea the M1 MacBook air remains an absolute steal. $999 was already an insanely good price for that level of performance, and now it's frequently going on sale for $800-900. Nobody can compete for that price.
I'm sure the M2 Air will eventually come down in price as well (or inflation will simply catch up to it). It's a good deal too, but the M1 Air is still a very attractive system for an entry level offering. Apple didn't skimp.
I absolutely agree. There are excellent products coming from other companies. And some products that Apple sold in years past are not too shabby either.
For me, I’m holding onto my 11 pro iPhone and Apple Watch 3 a little longer. No regrets or complaints. It still does what I purchased it to do even though there’s faster newer modes out there.
But I have made some recent purchases that I am very happy with such as the M1 Max Sudio, but I still use my 4 year old (not Apple) monitors with no regrets or complaints. I’m sure my M1 Max Studio and old monitors will be with me even after they announce the M2, M3, and M5 Max with Thunderbolt 7 in years to come.
I also purchased PCIe 4.0 SSD hardware from Sabrent, Samsung, WD, Trebleet and OWC over the last couple years to permanently replace my old HDD and DVD-R archives from decades past. Again no regrets or complaints.
Every now and then APPL and others come out with excellent products. Most of the time, they’re incremental updates, and sometimes they’re lemons. The key is to not be lured into purchases because of the hype or because it’s the latest thing. Get what you need when you need it after thorough research. Don’t let anyone pressure you into purchases, and don’t regret hanging onto older tech that you love.
I have contemplated the same thing many times, and at the moment, I am more all in on Apple than ever. The Apple One subscription really helped seal me in. My kids use hand me down iPads, and they have their own iCloud accounts and can use Arcade, Music, and watch our purchased movie content.
Apple TV works great, HomePod Minis are doable for music in my office (though I prefer Sonos in the rest of the house). HomeKit is also an easy to manage smart home solution, I prefer it over Google or Amazon after trying all three for years.
I thought about doing a switch to Google a few years ago, but I just can’t do it. They abandon product lines and services way too frequently, so I can’t rely on them (Chromebook Pixel, Stadia, Nexus devices, free Google Photos storage, etc).
If I were to switch at this point, I’d continue using an iPhone and iPad, but would potentially get a PC for home use. Amazon and their Echo devices are well supported and Amazon frequently makes improvements while still supporting older hardware.
The bottom line, you can switch it up today by just using different services on your existing Apple hardware, and then gradually buy new devices as needed.
But after troubleshooting affordable Android devices for friends and family, there is no way I would switch from an iPhone. The years of iOS updates is unmatched.
OP is correct and so are you. The nickel and diming / penny pinching is an incredibly cheap tactic. You’re right, it has been brewing for a while and this week's releases and stories have sort of lit a match. Read any forum anywhere and it’s overwhelming how this sentiment persists. I don’t know where it goes from here but the worlds first trillion dollar company shouldn’t be acting like this. Convoluted product lineup, nickel and dime tactics, cheap strategies that a first year business student can see through.
I got into Apple relatively late, 2014-ish. The ecosystem amazed me, all the devices so easily connected! My kids iPads thoroughly safe and private, all my media content etc. I haven’t purchased a new Apple product since this iPad Pro I’m using in 2020. each year I’ve seen it get worse. I hope my devices last a decade because the value just isn’t there anymore. If I bought an M1 iPad last year, now the rumor is that some lightweight macOS won’t run in it?? Utter trash.
Hypothesis: Mature product lines don’t need earth shattering updates every year in order to justify themselves.
Someone upgrading from the oldest gen iPad Pro is getting a HUGE upgrade here. I would say even someone going from a 2018 model to an M2 will notice the benefits. Beyond that, you do you but you’ll see diminishing returns.
Isn’t this just common sense when shopping for tech? The are years you’ll be interested in upgrading and years you won’t. Right?
Someone upgrading from the oldest gen iPad Pro is getting a HUGE upgrade here. I would say even someone going from a 2018 model to an M2 will notice the benefits. Beyond that, you do you but you’ll see diminishing returns.
Isn’t this just common sense when shopping for tech? The are years you’ll be interested in upgrading and years you won’t. Right?
It might go the way of automobiles, where extensive updates take place every 3-4 years and the years in between are more incremental (like we've seen between the iPhone 13 and the iPhone 14).
Personally, I'm completely okay with that, so long as companies commit to long support cycles. Technology has gotten to the point where it's good enough to not need to upgrade every single year anymore (frankly it's a lot to keep up with).