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iPad How come MacRumors hate the iPad?
- Thread starter Zest28
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I have a 12.9” M2 iPad Pro 128 GB / 8 GB. Also have a 16” M1 Max MBP 64 GB RAM.
Just now tried editing a PDF doc in the Files app on iPad with stage manager open with Safari & Teams app with a PiP Youtube video playing.
My Files app refreshed in the middle of editing & lost all my progress on the doc & I had to restart it all. Couldn’t undo. Even tho with iPadOS 16 Apple enabled memory swap up to 16 GB, my app still refreshed & lost progress.
So from my usage, the iPad Pro is a pathetic device with an overpowered M2 chip.
Not to mention the terrible & clunky stage manager experience with trying to switch between windows.
I do use it about 6 hours a day tho, due to the portability it’s more convenient than my 16” MBP. But the actual usage experience is worse.
Safari / Webkit limitation is a whole other discussion. Safari is garbage & laggy. It makes my 64 GB M1 Max feel like it’s dying. Terrible browser. Firefox for the win. Too bad all browsers on iPadOS / iOS are reskins of Safari. Another reason why iPad is worse.
I try to do school work, simple document editing with the iPad, but the experience is literally worse than the MBP in every way. Unless you’re a digital artist & require the Apple Pencil, it’s a frustrating & poorer experience every time.
Even using the iPad Pro for media consumption is not ideal, due to the aspect ratio, you get massive black bars essentially wasting your screen space. The MBP 16:10 is way better for watching videos.
Personally, in every way that I use my iPad, my MBP can do those tasks easier.
Only reason I got it was to be a MacBook Air like device with the Magic Keyboard to take on the go while leaving the 16” MBP at home, & for downloading & watching movies/shows offline for travel, & for FaceTime. Side note, the FaceTime camera on the M2 iPad Pro is so bad & grainy compared to the FaceTime camera on the iPhone 14 Pro in the same lighting environment that I tested. So another area where it fails again.
So many flaws with this device that I want to love it’s sad.
Finally, my BASE storage M2 iPad Pro 12.9” cellular was $1650 with the Magic Keyboard. That is a ridiculous price.
The M1 Pro 14” is on sale everywhere at that price, M1 & M2 MacBook Air are cheaper than that too.
The iPad is really just an enthusiast device for someone who wants a tablet or hybrid device.
iPadOS is holding it back from being a laptop replacement.
Just now tried editing a PDF doc in the Files app on iPad with stage manager open with Safari & Teams app with a PiP Youtube video playing.
My Files app refreshed in the middle of editing & lost all my progress on the doc & I had to restart it all. Couldn’t undo. Even tho with iPadOS 16 Apple enabled memory swap up to 16 GB, my app still refreshed & lost progress.
So from my usage, the iPad Pro is a pathetic device with an overpowered M2 chip.
Not to mention the terrible & clunky stage manager experience with trying to switch between windows.
I do use it about 6 hours a day tho, due to the portability it’s more convenient than my 16” MBP. But the actual usage experience is worse.
Safari / Webkit limitation is a whole other discussion. Safari is garbage & laggy. It makes my 64 GB M1 Max feel like it’s dying. Terrible browser. Firefox for the win. Too bad all browsers on iPadOS / iOS are reskins of Safari. Another reason why iPad is worse.
I try to do school work, simple document editing with the iPad, but the experience is literally worse than the MBP in every way. Unless you’re a digital artist & require the Apple Pencil, it’s a frustrating & poorer experience every time.
Even using the iPad Pro for media consumption is not ideal, due to the aspect ratio, you get massive black bars essentially wasting your screen space. The MBP 16:10 is way better for watching videos.
Personally, in every way that I use my iPad, my MBP can do those tasks easier.
Only reason I got it was to be a MacBook Air like device with the Magic Keyboard to take on the go while leaving the 16” MBP at home, & for downloading & watching movies/shows offline for travel, & for FaceTime. Side note, the FaceTime camera on the M2 iPad Pro is so bad & grainy compared to the FaceTime camera on the iPhone 14 Pro in the same lighting environment that I tested. So another area where it fails again.
So many flaws with this device that I want to love it’s sad.
Finally, my BASE storage M2 iPad Pro 12.9” cellular was $1650 with the Magic Keyboard. That is a ridiculous price.
The M1 Pro 14” is on sale everywhere at that price, M1 & M2 MacBook Air are cheaper than that too.
The iPad is really just an enthusiast device for someone who wants a tablet or hybrid device.
iPadOS is holding it back from being a laptop replacement.
The iPad outsells mainly because the cheaper iPads sell much more than the expensive ones and are much cheaper than Macs. And many people using Windows buy them, but don't buy Macs.
Exactly. I have 4 iPads in our house right now and no Macbooks. I want to try MacOS again, but I am not shelling out money to do so only to lose money again on staying on windows. So, I am going to take an older notebook I have and run OpenCore on it and try the basic functionality of MacOS, if I like it, then i will purchase a new Macbook.
Yep. I've bought 6 iPads but never a Mac.
I'm assuming that by "MacRumors" you actually mean the forum members. I'm also assuming that MacRumors forum members are, on average, more "power users" and other tech-savvy people compared to the general population. Many people here like, want or need things like full file management, the Terminal, virtual machines, emulators, multiple external displays, tons of RAM, and so on. The Terminal alone is a whole world that is missing from the iPad. But I don't think many people here hate the iPad. I love my iPad, I just hate when people say it's the only computer one needs.
Hate stems from fear, and I suspect that once upon a time, there was a very real fear that Apple just might be willing to give up on the Mac in order to push the iPad forward. For a while, it seemed like development of the Mac had all but stagnated (no new Mac Pro, iMac Pro was limited, MBPs were stuck with intel processors, crappy keyboards, thin form factors that throttled, only usb-c ports and loss of magsafe). Meanwhile, the iPad had the A12x processor that gave it superior performance and battery life, iOS was for a time getting cooler and newer features over the Mac, and actually had a better keyboard!
The Mac crowd needed someone to blame and vent their frustration on, and the iPad was the perfect punching bag because it really did seem like all the attention and resources was being devoted to the iPad, causing the Mac to be neglected as a result.
Precisely, I just returned a new M2 "Pro" iPad this month because the PiP keeps crashing and doesn't recover despite tapping play in the PiP window repeatedly, until disabling PiP and reloading the player in Safari, then re-enabling PiP. It is beyond infuriating that this expensive Pro tablet is worse than my old 9th gen cheap iPad with iPadOS 15. Stage Manager was working ok but is still vastly inferior to just using my MBP without Stage Manager.
Losing progress in refreshing apps is also pretty bad. I consider myself a pro user with a ton of content open at all times and I understand that even the iPad Pro has its limits. But the issues are so bad that I'll literally be browsing with a couple extra tabs open and after finishing a tab and switching back to the previous one, that previous one sometimes has lost its state and will reload. And when that tab was an actual web app that has to reload all its resources for 30 seconds, and then all progress is lost within that web app as well... I am about ready to throw that iPad against a wall.
The real issue with the iPad Pros is much simpler and boils down to the fact that iPadOS is just as limited on $1000 "Pro" devices as it is on a $329 9th gen iPad. Apps reloading randomly and losing their state, PiP not working properly with anything other than Youtube and completely breaking with Twitch anytime other media starts playing even for a moment, all bugs and limitations of the software.
There are no issues whatsoever as long as I stay in any one single app. But any iPad can do that. I expect to be able to use multi-tasking and Apple advertises these Pro iPads for that functionality. That's why I got one in the first place. There are for sure other uses for iPad Pros that doesn't involve multi-tasking and I know users that just get one so they can watch TV in HDR, or draw with the Apple Pencil. And they are great devices for that - but for these uses I don't need to pay a grand for a M2 chip either.
I am all for marrying iPadOS and MacOS, if Apple makes the Mac redundant with a lighter more flexible tablet I'd welcome that. I don't care about the form factor too much or necessarily the underlying OS. I just want the Apple build quality and high-end hardware like M1 and XDR display, as well as the excellent battery life. And I need to be able to run my workflows of course.
If there was an iPad Pro that had roughly the capabilities of my 64GiB M1 Max I'd switch in a heartbeat and if only for the novelty of it and being an early adopter.
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And this rumoured hate towards the iPad is shown exactly where?
And for some reason my M1 iPad is a beast when it comes to usage. I tried an Macbook Air twice and always come back to the iPad.
I love Stage Manager and use it quite often. I've taken the time to learn how to use it when navigating and moving windows both with and without keyboard. I have 15 tabs open in Safari and just switched through them with no lag. I use PiP all the time with either the Xfinity Stream app or ESPN app. Last week I worked remotely and used the 15.9" portable monitor I had with me and loved the secondary display. Took some photos of my son's baseball game and did quite a bit of editing. No reloads or crashes.
To top it off, yesterday I took it off the Magic Keyboard and used it most of the day browsing, watching stuff on PiP and messaging while lounging on the sofa. The Macbook Air can't do that.
I love Stage Manager and use it quite often. I've taken the time to learn how to use it when navigating and moving windows both with and without keyboard. I have 15 tabs open in Safari and just switched through them with no lag. I use PiP all the time with either the Xfinity Stream app or ESPN app. Last week I worked remotely and used the 15.9" portable monitor I had with me and loved the secondary display. Took some photos of my son's baseball game and did quite a bit of editing. No reloads or crashes.
To top it off, yesterday I took it off the Magic Keyboard and used it most of the day browsing, watching stuff on PiP and messaging while lounging on the sofa. The Macbook Air can't do that.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I could've sworn the Mac was outselling the iPad throughout 2021 and half of 2022
iPad is still a very limited device for my own needs, but I don’t hate it. And I don’t know what made you think that “MacRumors hates it”
"232 million iPhones, 61 million iPads and 26 million Mac and MacBook units were sold in 2022"
According to https://www.businessofapps.com/data/apple-statistics/
Well, I personally prefer using my iPad Air 4 over my 2015 MBP any time I can, just because it is lighter, more portable, and, most importantly for me, has virtual keyboards in different languages I use regularly.
So my MBP is used mainly to stream movies to the TV and move some stuff over to iPad and iPhone with a cable. The iPadOS current limitations the others have mentioned are real, but then it is so simple to use that I guess many people are willing to forgive those shortcomings. Convenience wins over functionality, I guess.
So my MBP is used mainly to stream movies to the TV and move some stuff over to iPad and iPhone with a cable. The iPadOS current limitations the others have mentioned are real, but then it is so simple to use that I guess many people are willing to forgive those shortcomings. Convenience wins over functionality, I guess.
"This placed Apple in fourth place for US PC market share at 13.5% across 2022. The data shows Dell in first at 26.3% market share, with HP and Lenovo following at 23.9% and 15.9%, respectively."
https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...apple-near-flat-as-pc-market-declines-in-2022
The problem with statistics is the confusion people make between units sold and revenues.
Cheaper devices tend to sell many more units (see cheap Windows PCs or cheap Android phones) but they may or may not make more revenues than more expensive devices (let alone profits, but that's another story...)
So it's perfectly possible to have Macs making more revenues than iPads but iPads selling more units than Macs.
I own a 13” HP Windows laptop and a 2022 iPad Air. I don’t notice any particular hate towards the iPad on this site. But then again, I don’t try to use my iPad like a laptop. I use the iPad for reading, media consumption, emails, web surfing, marking up PDF’s with a Logitech Crayon (my one work-related usage). The laptop is primarily used for Word, Excel, some games, financial stuff, and remote access into my workstation that I use for my engineering job. The bottom line is that I use each device for different things with only some overlap. If I tried to use my iPad as a laptop, I probably would be disappointed. Each device has strenghs and weaknesses, and both are heavily used in my case.
I have the same size option. Pretty impressive that even with 8 GB RAM you didn't experience any issues with the tasks you described.
I have had multiple occasions where my apps refresh due to low RAM even when I only have less than 3 tabs & a video playing.
I have had a video stream reload, Reddit in Safari reload, Files app reload etc.
Very inconsistent experience.
Since it is lighter, more portable, and—most significantly for me—has virtual keyboards in the several languages I frequently use, I personally choose to use my iPad Air 4 whenever possible instead of my 2015 MBP.
As a result, I mostly use my MBP to transfer files through a connection to my iPad and iPhone and stream movies to the TV. The restrictions of the iPad OS that have been previously noted are true, but since it is so user-friendly, I assume that many consumers are ready to overlook such drawbacks. I suppose that comfort triumphs over utility.
I haven’t read through the whole thread so I’m sorry if someone else brought this up already. I think people on the forums tend to be more receptive towards the cheaper iPads (maybe not so much the 10th gen iPad), especially as a companion device. It’s the Pro’s that draw most criticism.
I think the reason for this is the ‘Pro’ moniker creates different expectations, especially with a device that’s often marketed as a laptop replacement. For many here the iPad Pro doesn’t quite hit the spot just yet - almost entirely due to software.
I think the reason for this is the ‘Pro’ moniker creates different expectations, especially with a device that’s often marketed as a laptop replacement. For many here the iPad Pro doesn’t quite hit the spot just yet - almost entirely due to software.