iPad New iPad (10th gen) a "replacement" for the MacBook (for students)...?

[zachz]

Totally random idea I've had with the introduction of the new iPad (10th gen) and the somewhat strange new lineup and pricings...

This is from my student perspective from what I've observed over ~6 years of being in school, both in undergrad and graduate programs/courses at two universities...

Nearly everyone I've seen at the two universities I've attended (plus mutual friends and friends who go to other schools) use Apple products -- nearly everyone has an iPhone and most use MacBooks or iPads as their main device.

Now, most students I've seen and talked with aren't heavy users -- these people have older Pros or MacBook Airs (or iPads). The people who are heavy users have either top tiered PCs or M-series Pros and spend the extra money accordingly.

Those who aren't heavy users use their MacBooks as extensions of their iPhone with a few exceptions (full web browsing, research, writing, studying, etc) and are used to iOS.

Now, for the iPads, looking at how Apple is marketing them, the Pros are obviously marketed as a top tier Pro device, the Air seems like it's marketed to more creative types who don't need full blown "Pro" device (although the M-series still hasn't been fully utilized), the new iPad (10th gen) seems to be marketed as a student device for notes, research, writing, etc along with the 9th gen, and the Mini is a mini.

Someone who uses their device as a student device doesn't necessarily need a full-blown computer and given how much we use our phones and social media, an iPad would be more fitting as a "large iPhone" that can also do the other tasks that can't be done on an iPhone and can be done on a laptop -- which is where the iPad (10th gen) seems to be perfect.

Yes the new iPad is expensive for a lower end iPad, especially with the keyboard add on, but the price brings it similarly close to a MacBook, and it makes sense for someone to spend that kind of money if they were going to get a MacBook just because it was the only option to do basic activities in the Apple Ecosystem (yes there's the Air/Pro with MKB but it doesn't seem to be fully marketed towards students like the 10th Gen is).

Now, I think it's a "MacBook" replacement for the above reasons and because of the colors -- I got the yellow M1 iMac and was really hoping the M2 MacBook Air would have matching colors being the "base" product but that did not happen. Plus, with how powerful the M-series is, it is more powerful than what most people need, especially students, so maybe that is where the new, brightly colored iPads come in?

 

[fwmireault]

As a student myself, I get your point. iPad is a fantastic device to take notes, annotate PDFs, read textbooks, and also as a media consumption device. This new iPad seems like a good deal for students, as iPad Air and Pro are significantly more expensive. I have myself an iPad Pro and I would not get rid of my MacBook. I consider having very basic needs and while most of the tasks I need to do can be done on iPad, they are just painful to do compared to a Mac (file management, switching back between Word and Safari for research papers, etc.).

Stage Manager will make that a tad easier (which the 10th iPad will not get), but when I need to switch repeatedly between more than two windows, I will use a Mac. So I don't know if students will replace their Mac with the new iPad, I know that some people prefer iPadOS over macOS even with the multitasking limitations. Maybe the iPad 10th gen would be a great and relatively inexpensive option to get in addition to a MacBook or older MBP. The end goal of Apple is definitely to push people to own both a Mac and an iPad, and at least in my case, this greedy strategy worked.

 

[JustAnExpat]

iPads are great as a media device, they are not great for academic writing. I discovered it's very difficult to use a library's portal to download journal articles and OCR them if needed. I noticed they don't have a version of Zotero for iOS yet either, and I don't think the workflow would be possible. Also, I don't think there's any good academic writing software program. I heard Scrivener for iOS isn't that good compared to the Mac version. Honestly, stay on the MacBook, it'll make life so much better.

 

[CloudChief]

I'm not so sure. I have just graduated and most people (STEM degree, UK) used plastic windows laptops. In fact, I remember looking at the machines in one lecture theatre and seeing that most of the expensive laptops were Windows laptops.

I definitely saw a shift to more students using iPads from 2018-2022 but most still used laptops (or had both, like me). I saw one person using a keyboard with their iPad rather than the pencil too (why not just get a laptop). The problem is software. Any kind of 'advanced' statistics? Good luck using SPSS, R, Python, etc on an iPad. Likewise, referencing software is still lacking. Zotero has only just been ported to iPad, and it doesn't have direct MS Office integration (to my knowledge) like the desktop version does. This doesn't even touch upon all the free software like Libre Office, GIMP, and DaVinci Resolve that are available on Mac (I know DaVinci is coming to iPad soon).

My experience of using the iPad during my time at university made me love my iPad less. I watched WWDC for four years, hoping things like external display support would be added and pro apps. Well, stage manager is too little too late for me. Still can't format external drives. And why can I download music to the files app but not add it to the Music app (on iPad)?? My M1 Air is fantastic and leagues better than my iPad.

Taking notes was cool and really useful. (I did start getting eye fatigue, though, and moved back to paper. ymmv.) Everything else was far superior on my Mac. If you already own a laptop for times you need to do stats, use excel plugins, etc, then an iPad could be a great addition. Using it as your only computer? I would not recommend that for any university student. Similarly, the web browsing experience is just better on Windows or MacOS. Safari has come a long way but I find it to be slower and buggier than Chrome/Edge/Firefox on my Mac (not forced to only use webkit). Plus you can use desktop browser extensions.

I also think the keyboard prices are egregious. The magic keyboard is £280-300 ish in the UK. Seriously?? It's a piece of soft plastic with no backlighting or function row. Even the new one for the base iPad is just a more expensive version of the Logitech folio/combo with no backlighting. I saw a couple of folk using iPad pros with those keyboards and wondered why they didn't just get a Mac. The software is better and a keyboard is included (backlit too).

But, when I started university, I thought an iPad would do everything that I needed. I had only used an iPad throughout high school and just reasoned that it met my needs then so why wouldn't it now. Other people might fall into the same trap, especially because the limitations aren't immediately obvious. How was I to know that MS Office for iPad is vastly inferior to MacOS and Windows? I had never really used them on a PC before for academic work.

 

[CloudChief]

iPads are great as a media device, they are not great for academic writing. I discovered it's very difficult to use a library's portal to download journal articles and OCR them if needed. I noticed they don't have a version of Zotero for iOS yet either, and I don't think the workflow would be possible. Also, I don't think there's any good academic writing software program. I heard Scrivener for iOS isn't that good compared to the Mac version. Honestly, stay on the MacBook, it'll make life so much better.

Zotero is on iOS now!

 

[subjonas]

If they don’t need to do the things laptops do that iPads are not good at, of course sure. So it might be case by case. I’m not really sure what the vast majority of students’ needs are these days.
But I suspect two things would be frustrating for many students if a standard iPad was their only computer: occasionally needing a bigger screen for better multitasking, and too much app and browser tab refreshing. If so, then a newer iPad Pro (with MK) would be suffice much better. Or a MacBook of course.

 

[JustAnExpat]

Zotero is on iOS now!

Really? Does it work the same way? What I used to do using my MacBook is to download PDFs from the university's library, merge and OCR the PDFs, run a quarry to extract certain keywords so I know which journal article may be relevant to my research, identify the relevant journal articles, read them on my MacBook while taking notes using Scrivener, and for relevant journal articles, add them in Zotero. I'd write the paper in Scrivener (since I can not get Word/ Pages to format APA correctly), convert the paper to PDF and put it on my iPad, where I'd mark it up using my Apple Pencil. For some reason, I see errors whenever there's a pencil in my hand, but not on the screen. I'd edit the paper, and repeat the cycle as needed.

I don't think this workflow would work on an iPad.

 

[Zaino]

Could connect an external hard drive to this model of ipad ?