Will they though? They would capture more windows users. They already have the Neo actually. iPad still has another job mainly around simpler tasks. I’ve not yet got to love the Macosy windows management.
Have you ever connected an iPad to an external display, mouse, and keyboard? I agree with you that laptop sales would continue, but I bet they would decline. Apple could do the MS Surface much better than MS did.
I’m not so sure personally. A MacBook Air is not that much less portable than an iPad, but is far more useful for work when not docked than an iPad because it still has a keyboard and a precision pointing device. And it can still be docked when you need a bigger screen.
The areas where the iPad beats the MacBook are still (imo) the same as the day it launched: web browsing, watching video, and reading. Workloads that are heavy on the Apple Pencil too, but that’s a fairly narrow slice compared to anything else you might do on a computer.
I mean my iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard case has fully replaced my Mac for everything. I haven’t touched my Mac in months. I literally do all of my work via GitHub Codespaces (soon to be self-hosted Coder). Yes it’s not all on device but it works (for me).
I don’t see anything in my use case that I’d gain from a MacBook over this setup.
Yeah I used a Magic Keyboard myself for a while but I found it significantly impacted what I liked about the iPad. It doubled the weight, and removed the ability to hold it in my hand or in portrait (still the most common orientation I use mine). Sure you can take it out any time, but I found it just added a lot of extra friction to a device that previously had very little (iPadOS aside). Glad it’s working well for you though.
People have been leasing phones since at least the mid naughties, they just did it via their carrier. I distinctly remember standing in the Alltel store in 2006-ish, before it got gobbled up by ATT, and wondering if I could afford the extra $15/mo that the new Nokia candybar phone would run me. The only thing that's new is that Apple is offering it directly.
You could and still can do both from your carrier, it's pretty standard. In my experience, it's somewhat uncommon for people to actually buy their phones outright unless you make a lot of money (like the folks who tend to frequent HN). Every two years, my wife and I would sign up for a new 24-month contract, which would include two new phones. After those 24 months, we could keep paying off the remainder of the phones and keep them, or we could return them and start a new contract with new phones.
> Are you telling me people rented nokia bricks in the aughts?
Myself and my family did, for sure. My parents made me pay my own phone bill too, so I spent a long time in the Alltel shop staring at the different phones and probably annoying the clerk.
> it's somewhat uncommon for people to actually buy their phones outright unless you make a lot of money
Or like many of us, you buy cheaper phones outright for your prepaid phone plans. The fact that people still go for contract phone services and finance a new phone every two years blows my mind. Especially when I can get all the data/minutes/texts I need for $15 a month on a service like Tello, and just get a phone for $200-400 that I can use until it dies. Which is currently a used iPhone 11 I recently opened up to replace the battery.
See my comment elsewhere in this thread, but you are blowing my mind. I'm not from the US and I did not realize that renting a mobile device was actually this common. I'm one of the lucky 10,000 today, thanks!
The near perfect condition part is not strictly enforced though. For example if your screen broke you could replace with a cheap third-party screen.
Like leasing a car, the residual value may differ, which can either make it worthwhile or not. Around ten years ago the lease deals were really good. Nowadays my carrier has all but discouraged them.
I mean, you might find this hard to believe since you have a fixed view, but I'm old enough that we had one of those old-school rotary phones. My family literally leased that phone as part of our phone bill up until the late 90s. I recall at one point we were forced to trade the rotary for a push button since the telecom was discontinuing support. When "caller id" became a new feature it only worked for the first while on the rented phones.
To this day, I suspect many people have a line-item on their Internet bill for their modem/router rental/lease.
Why you would find this hard to believe is actually the curious thing to me.
It's a hybrid - the Apple Upgrade program (both the old and new ones) let you keep the phone and pay it off over time like zero percent financing but also give you the option of returning the phone and getting a new one.
I honestly did not know this was a thing until today. I'm not from the US.
Where I'm from, it is common to finance a phone as part of a mobile contract: your monthly payment includes a device payment and the network subscription cost. Typically 24 months, but in recent years I've seen 36 month contracts as well. But at the end of the term the device is yours outright. No further down payments needed. Usually the device payment is effectively 0% APR over the 2 years, so it's a pretty lucrative deal. I've purchased all my phones this way over the past 20 years.
Then you’d like the upgrade program? The only difference is there is a final balloon payment for it to be yours. You end up paying exactly the same as paying up front.
Most people are short-term thinkers if you talk to anyone around you at work, school or at home and if you merely suggest saving and controlling their spending briefly to buy something in the future good luck. I have given up.
I just buy more shares of blue chip companies and let them pay in the future for anything I want to buy.
Not the person you're replying to, but Face ID just works much less reliably for me. I usually wear glasses, and when I get up in the morning and am not wearing them yet, it usually takes a number of tries before my phone will unlock. Sometimes it will also randomly not work in the middle of the day, maybe because of glares or something. Touch ID always just worked.
After jumping from an iPhone to a Pixel and back, the only thing I miss is fingerprint unlock which is way faster and more convenient than Face ID. You don’t need to adjust the phones position or anything if it’s too close to your face or in a position where it can’t scan your face.
I echo what lutoma said. I hateHateHATE the endless having to tilt and/or move around the phone all the time (especially, but not only, after awaking) to get Face ID to "work". Give me Touch ID any day.
I prefer TouchID because FaceID doesn't work when my phone is flat on the table and away from me. That's is how I use my phone most of the time, I don't really hold it up to my face.
This is exactly the kind of paranoid conspiracy thinking I was talking about. If you see red yarn between everything, you're impervious to reality.
Honestly, I'm an Apple user since 1988 and shareholder. I use my full-ass name on hn. I wish they'd give me money to promote the brand, but in reality they have something even more valuable than paid shitposting: authentic word of mouth and devoted users. That comes out of the product, not the marketing department, and it takes years.
Flawless logic! I can’t believe I got busted again… The other lizard people are going to be so disappointed. I’m already on probation for leaking the fact that the Earth is flat and bungling the JFK thing. Now they’ll probably pull me off the microwave mind reading project too.
reply